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PUNtHY 




SOME STRANGE CORNERS 
OF OUR COUNTRY 




NAVAJO BLANKET. 



SOME STRANGE CORNERS 
OF OUR COUNTRY 

THE WONDERLAND OF THE SOUTHWEST 



BY 



CHARLES F. LUMMIS 

V 
AUTHOR OF " TEE-WAHN FOLK-LORE," "^ NEW MEXICO 
DAVID," "A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT," ETC. 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO, 

1903 



■ I U5 



Copyright, 1891, 1892, by 
The Century Co. 



^ 






THE DE VINNE PRESS. 



r, 



To MY Wife : Who has 

SHARED THE HARDSHIPS AND 

THE Pleasures of Exploring 
THE Strange Corners. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I The Grandest Gorge in the World 1 

II A Forest of Agate 20 

III The American Sahara 28 

IV The Rattlesnake Dance 43 

V Where they Beg the Bear's Pardon 58 

VI The Witches' Corner 66 

VII The Magicians 75 

VIII The Selp-Crucifiers 90 

IX Homes that were Forts 94 

X Montezuma's Well 122 

XI Montezuma's Castle 134 

XII The Greatest Natural Bridge on Earth 142 

XIII The Stone Autograph- Album 163 

XIV The Rivers of Stone 183 

XV The Navajo Blanket 198 

XVI The Blind Hunters 208 

XVII Finishing an Indian Boy 219 

XVIII The Praying Smoke 228 

XIX The Dance of the Sacred Bark 235 

XX Doctoring the Year 243 

XXI An Odd People at Home 255 

XXII A Saint in Court 262 

vii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Navajo Blanket frontispiece 

Drawn by F. E. Lummis 

Initial W 1 

Drawn by C. T. Hill, 

The Grand Canon of the Colorado. General View 3 

Drawn by T. Moban. Engraved by W. J. Linton 

Another View op the Grand Canon 6 

Drawn by "William H. Holmes. Reduced from the large 
plate in the Second Annual Report of the U. S. Geologi- 
cal Survey 

Within the Grand Canon 9 

Drawn by T. Moran. Engraved by W. J. Linton 

Head op the Grand Canon op the Colorado 12 

Drawn by T. Moran. Engraved by J, A. Bogeet 

Clbibing in the Grand Canon 13 

Drawn by T. Moran. Engraved by P. Annin 

Another View op the Grand Canon 15 

Drawn by T. Moran. Engraved by E. Bookhout 

Tree-trunk Petripied into an Agate Bridge 23 

Drawn by T. Moran. Engraved by T. Schussler 

The Great American Desert 29 

Drawn by W. C. Fitler. Engraved by E. Heinemann 

View Among the Cacti 34 

Drawn by W. C. Fitler 

Rev. J. W. Brier 39 

Drawn by Malcolm Eraser 

End-piece 42 

Drawn by W. Taber 

HuALPi— A MoQui Village 44 

Drawn by W. Taber 

The Dance-court and the Dance-rock 47 

Drawn by W. Taber 



The Moqui Indian Snake-dance 51 

Drawn by W. Taber 

Pueblo Prayer-sticks 62 

Drawn by W, Taber 

Pueblo Hunting Fetiches 65 

Drawn by J. M. Nugent 

Initial 75 

Drawn by W. Taber 

" Suddenly a Blinding Flash of Forked Lightning 
Shoots Across the Room" 81 

Drawn by W. Taber 

**The Growing of the Sacred Corn" 87 

Drawn by W. Taber 

Pueblo of Taos 96 

Drawn by W. Taber 

An Ancient Cliff-dwelling 99 

Drawn by T. Moran. Engraved by E. Bookhout 

Part of Canon de Tsay-ee 101 

Drawn by J. A. Fraser. Engraved by Peter Aitken 

Cliff- Village on the Mancos 105 

Drawn by W. Taber 

A Night Attack of Apaches upon the Cliff-fortress 106 

Drawn by W. Taber 

Ruined Cave-village, Canon de Tsay-ee 109 

Drawn by V. Perard. Engraved by H. E. Sylvester 

The Cueva Pintada, or '' Painted Cave " 112 

Drawn by W. Taber 

Mummy Cave and Village, Canon del Muerto, Arizona 115 

Drawn by J. A. Fraser. Engraved by H. E. Sylvester 

The White House, Canon de Tsay-ee 119 

Drawn by J. A. Eraser. Engraved by C. Schwarzburqer 

Initial 122 

Drawn by W. Taber 

Montezuma's Well 120 

Drawn by W. Taber 



"Montezuma's Castle," seen from Beaver Creek 135 

Drawn by W. Taber 

"Montezuma's Castle," from the foot of the Cliff 139 

Drawn by W. Taber 

Looking Through the South Arch op the Greatest 
Natural Bridge 145 

Drawn by W. Taber 

Rough Ground -plan of Gowan's Valley 149 

Drawn by F. E. Sitts 

Another View op the Great Bridge 151 

Drawn by W. Taber 

Natural Bridge near Fort Defiance, New Mexico 157 

Drawn by W. Taber 

The Eagle Fetich, actual size 160 

Drawn by F. E. Sitts 

Some Leaves from the Stone Autograph- Album 162 

Drawn by J. M. Nugent 

Fig. 1. Juan de Onate , 170 

Drawn by J. M. Nugent 

Fig. 2. Diego Martin Barba and Alferes Agostyn 172 

Drawn by J. M, Nugent 

Fig. 3. Diego Lucero de Godoy 174 

Drawn by J. M. Nugent 

Fig. 4. Juan Gonzales 175 

Drawn by J. M. Nugent 

Fig. 5. Ramon Paez Hurtado 175 

Drawn by J. M. Nugent 

Fig. 6. Juan Paez Hurtado 176 

Drawn by J. M. Nugent 

Fig. 7. Don Francisco Manuel de Silva Nieto 177 

Drawn by J. M. Nugent 

Fig. 8. Nieto 178 

Drawn by J. M. Nugent 

Fig. 9. Lujan 180 

Drawn by J. M. Nugent 



SOME STEAISTGE COElSrEES OF 
OUE COUISTTET. 



I. 



THE GRANDEST GORGE IN THE WORLD. 



'E live in the most wonderful of 
lands ; and one of the most won- 
derful things in it is that we as 
Americans find so little to won- 
der at. Other civilized nations take 
pride in knowing their points of 
natural and historic interest ; but 
when we have pointed to our mar- 
velous growth in population and 
wealth, we are very largely done, 
and hasten abroad in quest of 
sights not a tenth part so wonderfid as a thousand won- 
ders we have at home and never dream of. It is true that 
other nations are older, and have grown up to think of 
something besides material matters ; but our youth and our 
achievements are poor excuse for this unpatriotic slighting 




2 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

of om- own country. There is a part of America, — a pai*t 
even of the United States — of which Americans know as 
Uttle as they do of inner Africa, and of which too many of 
them are mnch less interested to learn. With them ''to 
travel" means only to go abroad j and they call a man a 
traveler who has run his superficial girdle around the world 
and is as ignorant of his own country (except its cities) as if 
he had never been in it. I hope to live to see Americans 
proud of hioiving America, and ashamed not to know it ; and 
it is to my young countrymen that I look for the patriotism 
to effect so needed a change. 

If we would cease to depend so much upon other countries 
for our models of life and thought, we would have taken the 
first step toward the Americanism which should be, but is 
not, ours. We read a vast amount of the wonders of foreign 
lands ; but very few writers — and still fewer reliable ones — 
tell us of the marvelous secrets of our own. Every intelhgent 
youth knows that there are boomerang-throwers in Australia ; 
but how many are aware that there are thousands of aborigi- 
nes in the United States just as expert with the magic club 
as are the Bushmen ?* All have read of the astounding feats 
of the jugglers of India ; but how many know that there are 
as good Indian jugglers "within our own boundaries? The 
curious " Passion Play " at Oberammergau is in the know- 
ledge of most young Americans ; but very few of them have 
learned the startling fact that every year sees in the United 

* The Pueblo Indians, who annually kill countless thousands of rab- 
bits with these weapons. 



THE GRANDEST GORGE IN THE WORLD. 5 

States an infinitely more dramatic Passion Reality, — a flesh 
and blood crucifixion, — wherein an ignorant fanatic repre- 
sents in fact the death of the Savior. How many young 
Americans could say, when some traveler recounted the ex- 
ploits of the world-famous snake-charmers of the Orient, 
" Why, yes, we have tribes of Indians in this country whose 
trained charmers handle the deadliest snakes with impimity," 
and go on to tell the astonishing facts in the case? How 
many know that there are Indians here who dwell in huge 
six-story tenements of theu' own building ! How many know 
that the last witch in the United States did not go up in the 
cruel smoke of old Salem, but that there is stiU within our 
borders a vast domain wherein witchcraft is as fully believed 
in as yesterday is, and where somebody is executed every 
year for the strange crime of " being a witch " ? 

These are but a few of the strange things at home of 
which we know not. There are thousands of others ; and if 
it shall ever become as fashionable to write about America 
as it is about Africa, w^e shall have chance to learn that in 
the heart of the most civilized nation on earth are still sav- 
age peoples, whose customs are stranger and more interest- 
ing than those of the Congo. 

As to our scenery, we are rather better informed ; and 
yet every year thousands of un-American Americans go to 
Europe to see scenery infinitely inferior to oui' own, upon 
which they have never looked. We say there are no ruins in 
this country, and cross the ocean to admu^e crumbling piles 
less majestic and less interesting than are in America. We 



THE GRANDEST GORGE IN THE WORLD. 7 

read of famous gorges and defiles abroad, and are eager to 
see tliem, unknowing that in a desolate corner of the United 
States is the greatest natural wonder of the world — a canon 
in which all the world's famous gorges coidd be lost forever. 
And not one American in ten thousand has ever looked upon 
its a^vful gi'andeur. 

Of course, we know the Sahara, for that is not American ; 
but you will seek far to find any one who is familiar with an 
American desert as absolute and as fearful. We are aware 
of our giant redwoods in CaUfornia, — the hugest trees in 
the world, — but did you ever hear of a petrified forest cov- 
ering thousands of acres f There is one such in the United 
States, and man}^ smaller ones. Do you know that in one 
territory alone we have the ruins of over fifteen hundred 
stone cities as old as Columbus, and many of them far older ! 
Have you ever heard of towns here whose houses are three- 
story caves, hewn from the solid rock f 

It seems to me that when these and so many other won- 
ders are a part of America, we, who are Americans, should 
be ashamed to know absolutely nothing of them. If such 
things existed in England or Germany or France, there 
would be countless books and guides overflowing with infor- 
mation about them, and we would hasten on excursions to 
them, or learn aU that reading would teU us. 

There is no untruer proverb than the one which says, " It 
is never too late to learn." As we grow old we learn many 
things, indeed, and fancy ourselves enormously wisej but 
that wisdom is only the skin of life, so to say, and what we 



8 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

learn in youth is the real bone and blood. I would rather 
interest one of my young countrymen than a thousand of 
the unconvertible older ones j and if I eoidd induce him to 
resolve that, whatever else he learned, he would learn all he 
could of his own country, I should be very happy indeed. 
Let me tell you briefly, then, of a few of the strange corners 
of our country which I have found — something of the won- 
derland of the southwest — which I hope you will some day 
be interested to see for yourselves. 

I have spoken of the Grand Canon of the Colorado as a 
gorge in which all the famous gorges could be lost. Some of 
you have ridden through the " Grand Canon of the Arkan- 
saw," on the Denver and Rio Grande Railway in Colorado, and 
still more through the AVliite Mountain Notch and the Fran- 
conia Notch in New Hampshire. All three are very beauti- 
fid and noble ; but if any one of them were duplicated in 
the wall of the Grand Canon of the Colorado, and you were 
looking from the opposite brink of that stupendous chasm, 
you would have to have your attention called to those 
scratches on the other side before you would notice them at 
all ! If you were to take the tallest mountain east of the 
Rockies, dig down around its base a couple of thousand feet 
so as to get to the sea-level (from which its height is mea- 
sured), uproot the whole giant mass, and pitch it into the 
deepest of the Grand Canon of the Colorado, its granite top 
would not reach up to the dizzy crests of the cHffs wliich wall 
the awful bed of that muddy river. If you were on the 
stream, and New York's noble statue of Liberty Enhghten- 




WITHIN THE GRAND CANON. 



THE GRANDEST GORGE IN THE WORLD. 11 

ing the World were upon the cliffy it would look to you like 
the tiniest of dolls; and if it were across the canon from 
you, you would need a strong glass to see it at all ! 

The Grand Canon lies mostly in Arizona, though it touches 
also Utah, Nevada, and California. With its windings and 
side-canons of the first magnitude it is nearly seven hundred 
miles long j and in many places it is over a mile and a quar- 
ter deep ! The width of this unparalleled chasm at the top 
is from eight to twenty miles ; and looked down upon from 
above, a larger river than the Hudson (and more than three 
times as long) looks like a silver thread. The Yosemite and 
the Yellowstone, wonderful as they are in their precipices, — 
and the world outside of America cannot match those won- 
drous valleys, — are babies beside this peerless gorge. 

The walls of the Grand Canon are in most places not per- 
pendicular; but seen from in front they all appear to be. 
They are mostly of sandstone, but in places of marble, and 
again of limestone, and yet again of volcanic rock ; generally 
"terraced" in a manner entirely peculiar to the southwest, 
and cleft into innumerable buttes, which seem towers and 
castles, but are infinitely more vast and more noble than the 
hand of man will ever rear. And when the ineffable sun- 
shine of that arid but enchanted land falls upon their won- 
drous domes and battlements with a glow which seems not 
of this world, the sight is such a revelation that I have seen 
strong men sit down and weep in speechless awe. 

There are no great falls in the Grand Canon ; but many 
beautiful and lofty ones in the unnumbered hundreds of side- 




Y^r^y.- 



■;M^&^\.^ 



HEAD OF THE GRAND CANON OF THE COLOKAUO 



THE GRANDEST G-ORGE IN THE WORLD. 



13 



canons which en- 
ter the gi'eat one. 
I had almost said 
" little canons/' 
for so they seem 
in the presence 
of their giant 
mother; bnt in 
reality, almost 
any one of them 
would shame any 
canon elsewhere. 
There is no 
such thing as 
describing the 
Grand Canon, 
and I dare not 
try. But I shall 
borrow a few 
words from the 
man who has 
come nearer giv- 
ing in words a 
hint of the canon 
than has any one 
else — Charles 
Dudley Warner. 
He has said : 




CLIMBING IN THE GRAND CANON. 



14 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

" This region is probably tlie most interesting territory of 
its size on the globe. At least it is unique. In attempting 
to convey an idea of it the writer can be assisted by no 
comparison. . . . The Vermilion Cliffs, the Pink Cliffs, the 
Wliite Cliffs surpass in fantastic form and brilliant color 
anything that the imagination conceives possible in natm^e j 
and there are dreamy landscapes quite beyond the most ex- 
quisite fancies of Claude and of Turner. The region is full 
of wonders, of beauties, and sublimities that Shelley's im- 
aginings do not match in the ^Prometheus Unbound.' . . . 
Human experience has no protot}^e of this region, and the 
imagination has never conceived of its forms and colors. It 
is impossible to convey an adequate idea of it by pen or 
pencil or brush. . . . The whole magnificence broke upon us. 
No one could be prepared for it. The scene is one to strike 
dumb with awe, or to unstring the nerves. ... It was a 
shock so novel that the mind, dazed, quite failed to compre- 
hend it. All that we could comprehend w^as a vast confusion 
of amphitheaters and strange architectural forms resplendent 
with color. The vastness of the view amazed us quite as 
much as its transcendent beauty. . . . We had come into a 
new world. . . . This great space is filled with gigantic archi- 
tectural constructions, with amphitheaters, gorges, precipices, 
walls of masonry, fortresses, temples mountain size, all brill- 
iant with horizontal lines of color — streaks of solid hues a 
thousand feet in width — yellows, mingled white and gray, 
orange, dull red, brown, blue, carmine, green, all blending in 
the sunlight into one transcendent effusion of splendor. . . . 




ANOTHER VIEW OF THE GRAND CANON. 



THE GRANDEST GORGE IN THE WORLD. 17 

Tlie vast abyss has an atmosphere of its own . . . golden, 
rosy, gray, brilliant and somber, and playing a thousand fan- 
tastic tricks to the vision. . . . Some one said that all that 
was needed to perfect this scene was a Niagara Falls. I 
thought what figure a fall 150 feet high and 3000 long would 
make in this arena. It would need a spy-glass to discover it. 
An adequate Niagara here should be at least three miles in 
breadth and fall 2000 feet over one of those walls. And the 
Yosemite — ah! the lovely Yosemite ! Dumped down into 
this wilderness of gorges and mountains, it would take a 
guide who knew of its existence a long time to find it. . . . 
Those who have long and carefully studied the Grand Canon 
of the Colorado do not hesitate for a moment to pronounce 
it by far the most sublime of all earthly spectacles.'^ 

Very few Ajuericans see the Grand Canon — shamefully 
few. Most of it lies in an absolute desert, where are neither 
people, food, nor obtainable water — for the river has carved 
this indescribable abyss of a trough through a vast flat up- 
land, from which in many places a descent to the stream 
is impossible ; and yet the canon is easily reached at some 
points. The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad comes (at Peach 
Springs, Arizona) mthin twenty -three miles of it, and one 
can take a stage to the canon. The stage-road winds down 
to the bottom of the Grand Canon by way of the Diamond 
Creek Canon, which is itself a wonderful chasm. 

The point whence Mr. Warner saw the canon was at the 
head of the Hance trail, in the Kaibab plateau ; and it is by 
far the subhmest part of the canon that is accessible. It is 



18 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

reached by a sixty-seven-mile ride from Flagstaff on tlie At- 
lantic and Pacific Railroad. Three hundi'ed and fifty years 
ago a poor Spanish lieutenant with twenty men penetrated 
that fearful mlderness and looked down upon the world's 
utmost wonder. And only now, for the first time in its his- 
tory, is the Grand Canon easily accessible to the traveler at 
its noblest point. A good stage-Hne has just been started 
from Flagstaff, and I went out on the second trip, unwilling 
to advise travelers except from personal knowledge. Mr. 
Clarke, of St. Nicholas, was with me. The road has been 
much improved since Mr. Warner's \dsit, and is now the best 
long mountain-road in the southwest. There are comfort- 
able hotels in Flagstaff, the stages are comfortable, the three 
relays of horses make the sixtj^-seven-mile journey easily in 
eleven hours, and there is notliing in the trip to deter ladies 
or young people. The drive is through the fine pine forests, 
with frequent and changing views of the noble San Fran- 
cisco peaks and the Painted Desert. It brings one to the very 
brink of this terrific gorge almost without warning ; and one 
looks down suddenly upon all that matchless wonderland. 
The canon is here G600 feet deep. One can explore it for 
miles along the rim, finding new wonders at every step. 
Even if one sits in one spot, one sees a new canon every hour 
— the scene-changers are always sliifting that divine stage- 
setting. One should not fail to descend the excellent trail 
to the river — seven miles — built by that interesting pioneer 
John Hance. It gives an altogether new idea of the canon 
— and if one stays a month and travels every hour of day- 



THE GRANDEST GORGE IN THE WORLD. 19 

liglifc, one does not yet realize the canon. At the end of a 
lifetime, it would be more interesting than ever. 

The stage journey takes a day each way, and the fare for 
the round trip is twenty dollars. One should take as much 
time as possible at the canon ; but three days in all (includ- 
ing the stage-ride) is better than nothing — indeed, is better 
than anything anywhere else. Good meals and beds are 
there at one dollar each. This line can operate only from 
May 1st to December 1st, on account of the winter snows 
of that 7000-foot plateau; but from December to May one 
can go in by the Peach Springs route, which reaches the 
bottom of the canon, and is more comfortable in winter than 
in summer. 



II. 



A FOREST OF AGATE. 




ROM the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad it is stiU 
easier to reach a great natural cmiosity — the 
huge Petrified Forest of Arizona. Much the 
nearest point is the little station of Billings^ but 
there are scant accommodations there for the 
traveler — only a railroad section-house and a ranch-house. 
Only a mile south of the track, at that point, one may see a low, 
dark ridge, marked by a single cotton-wood tree. Walldng 
thither (over a valley so aHve with jack-rabbits that there is 
some excuse for the cow-boy declaration that ^^ you can walk 
clear across on their backs ! ") one soon reaches the northern 
edge of the forest, which covers hundreds of square miles. 
Unless you are more hardened to wonderful sights than I am, 
you ^\dll almost fancy yourself in some enchanted spot. You 
seem to stand on the glass of a gigantic kaleidoscope, over 
whose sparkling surface the sun breaks in infinite rainbows. 
You are ankle-deep in such chips as I '11 warrant you never 
saw from any other woodpile. What do you think of chips 
from trees that are red moss-agate, and amethyst, and smoky 
topaz, and agate of every hue ? That is exactly the sort of 



A FOREST OF AGATE. 21 

splinters that cover the ground for miles here, aronnd the 
huge prostrate trunks — some of them five feet through — 
from which Time's patient ax has hewn them. I broke a 
specimen from the heart of a tree there, years ago, which had, 
around the stone pith, a remarkable array of large and ex- 
quisite crystals J for on one side of the specimen — which is 
not so large as my hand — is a beautiful mass of crystals of 
royal purple amethyst, and on the other an equally beautiful 
array of smoky topaz crystals. One can also get magnificent 
cross- sections of a whole trunk, so thin as to be portable, and 
showing every vein and even the bark. There is not a chip 
in all those miles which is not worthy a place, just as it is, 
in the proudest cabinet, and when pohshed I know no other 
rock so splendid. It is one of the hardest stones in the world, 
and takes and keeps an incomparable pohsh. 

In the ciuious sandstone hills a mile northeast of Bilhngs 
is an outlying part of the forest, less beautiful but fully as 
strange. There you will find giant petrified logs, three and 
four feet in diameter, projecting yards from steep bluffs of 
a peculiar bluish clay. Cmiously enough, this " wood " is not 
agate, nor bright-hued, but a soft combination of browns 
and grays, and absolutely opaque — whereas all the '^wood" 
across the valley is translucent and some of it quite trans- 
parent. It also " splits up " in an entirely different fashion. 
But if these half -hidden logs in the bluffs are less attractive 
to the eye, they are quite as interesting, for they teU even 
more clearly of the far, forgotten days when all this great 
upland (now five thousand feet above the sea) sank with all 



22 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

its forests, and lay for centuries in water strongly charged 
with mineral, which tiu'ned the undecaying trees to eternal 
stone. These latter trunks project about a thu'd of the way 
up a bluff over one hundred feet high. They are packed in a 
twenty-foot deposit of fine clay ; and above them since the 
waters buried them there has formed a stratum of sohd sand- 
stone more than thirty feet thick ! That shows what un- 
counted millenniums they have been there. The erosion 
which has carved the bluffs out of the general table-land, 
and thus at last exposed the ends of these stone logs, was of 
comparatively recent date. There is no knowing how much 
more earth and stone lay once above the logs, when erosion 
first began to change the face of the whole country. Other 
logs are solidly imbedded in the rock chff itself. 

The most convenient way of reaching the Petrified Forest 
— and the most impressive part of it — is by a fifteen-mile 
drive from Holbrook station. In Chalcedony Park, as this 
part of the forest is called, is the largest number of huge pet- 
rified trees to be found in any one place in the world. One 
of them spans a deep arroyo forty feet wide, forming prob- 
ably the only bridge of solid agate on this globe. The inev- 
itable vandal has blown up a few of these superb stone logs 
with giant-powder, to get some specimens for his contempt- 
ible pocket; but there are thousands still spared, and the 
forest is now so guarded that a repetition of these outrages 
is not probable. In Tiffany's jewelry store. New York, you 
can see some magnificent specimens of polished cross-sections 
from these logs, which command enormous prices. The man 




TREE-TRUNK PETRIFIED INTO AN AGATE BRIDGE. 



A FOREST OF AGATE. 25 

in Sioux Falls who superintended the sawing of them told 
me that a steel saw^ six inches wide and aided by diamond- 
dust, was worn down to a half -inch ribbon in going through 
thu'ty-six inches of that adamantine "wood" — a process 
which lasted many days. 

This petrified forest was a very important thing in the 
economy of the brown first Americans — long centuries before 
Europe di-eamed of a New World. Its beautiful "woods" 
traveled all over the great southwest, and sometimes far out 
into the plains. Not that the Indians used it for jewelry 
as we are now doing ; but they made of it articles far more 
valuable than the little charms into which it is nowadays 
polished by the thousands of dollars^ worth annually. Some 
of this agate was the very best material possible for their 
arrow-heads, spear-heads, knives, scrapers, and other material ; 
and they seem to have preferred it to the commoner volcanic 
glass. Many hundreds of miles from the Petrified Forest I 
have picked up these stone implements which were unmis- 
takably made from its "wood." I have hundreds of beautiful 
arrow-points, and many spear-heads of all sorts of agate, 
and several scalping-knives of lovely moss agate, aU of which 
came from there originally, though all found at long dis- 
tances away. The Indians used to make excursions thither 
to get these prized chips ; and evidently traded them to very 
distant tribes. 

In the extreme eastern edge of Arizona, some forty miles 
southeast of the Petrified Forest, and about forty miles south- 
west of the remote and interesting Indian pueblo of Zuni, 



26 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

N. M., is a strange natural phenomenon — a great, shallow salt 
lake, at the bottom of a bowl-like depression some himdi-eds 
of feet deep and about three miles across. The basin is daz- 
zUng white with a crust of salt crystals. About in the center 
rises a small black volcanic peak ; and if you will take the 
trouble to ford the salt lake — which is disagreeable but not 
dangerous to do — and climb the peak, you will find its crater 
half -fiUed with a lakelet of pure, fresh water ! There are very 
many of these salt lakes in the southwest, and from them the 
Indians from time immemorial have procui-ed their salt — and 
so did the Mexican colonists until within ten years. There 
is also a large river of salt water — the Salt River, in south- 
western Arizona. 

A very curious and disagreeable freak of nature found in 
some parts of the southwest is that treacherous pitfall known 
as the stmiidero. These ugly traps are quite numerous in 
some valleys — particularly in the vicinity of San Mateo, 
N. M. There is no danger-signal to show their whereabouts ; 
and the first warning one has of a sumidero is aj)t to be too 
late. These characteristic pits are a sort of mud springs 
with too much mud to flow, and too much water to dry up. 
They are roundish, about the size of a well-hole, and some- 
times as deep — in fact, they are what we might call masked 
weUs. There are quicksands at various points in nearly every 
stream of the southwest; but even these, frequently fatal as 
they are, are not nearly so dangerous as the sumideros. In 
fording a southwestern stream one expects, and is prepared 
for, quicksands. But there is no looking out for a sumidero. 



A FOREST OF AGATE. 27 

These masked wells occur in bare, alkali-covered flats. The 
mud upon their surface is baked dry, and there is absolutely 
nothing to distinguish them from the safe ground around. 
But man or horse or sheep or cow that once steps upon that 
treacherous surface slumps from sight in an instant. Many 
animals and some people perish in these sumideros, and the 
bodies are hardly ever recovered. The longest pole will not 
find bottom to one of these mud springs. A Mexican friend 
of mine is one of the few who ever got into a sumidero and 
got out again. He was loping across the dry plain when 
suddenly the horse disappeared in a great splash of mud. 
The rider was thrown from the saddle, and clutched the 
edges of the pit so that he was able to di*aw himself out. 

The pueblo of Zuni itseK is well worthy of a visit. It has 
an important history, as you will see in the chapter on the 
Stone Autograph Album; and its architecture, its people, 
and its customs are full of keen interest to every intelligent 
American. Among the least of its curiosities are several 
blonde Indians as genuine albinos as white rabbits are. They 
are pure-blooded Indians, but their skins are very light, their 
hair almost tow-color, and their eyes red. The people of 
Zuni also make the handsomest pottery of aU the Pueblos ; 
and some of their large old water- jars, painted with strange 
figures of elk and other animals, are really valuable. The 
best way to get to Zuni is from the station of Gallup, where 
carriages and drivers can be procui'ed. The road is too easily 
lost for the stranger to undertake it alone ; but the tireless 
horses of the country cover the lonely miles in a few hours. 




in. 



THE A3IERICAN SAHARA. 

!HE Great American Desert was almost better 
known a generation ago than it is to-day. Then 
thousands of the hardy Argonauts had tra- 
versed that fearful waste on foot with theii' 
dawdhng ox-teams, and hundreds of them had left then* 
bones to bleach in that thirsty land. The survivors of those 
deadly joui'neys had a very definite idea of what that desert 
was 5 but now that we can roll across it in a day in Pull- 
man palace-cars, its real — and still existing — horrors are 
largely forgotten. I have walked its hideous length alone 
and wounded, and realize something more of it from that 
than a great many railroad journeys across it since have told 
me. Now every transcontinental railroad crosses the great 
desert whose vast, arid waste stretches up and down the con- 
tinent, west of the Rocky Mountains, for nearly two thousand 
miles. The northern routes cut its least gruesome parts; 
but the two which traverse its southern half — the Atlantic 
and Pacific Railroad and the Southern Pacific Raih'oad — 
pierce some of its gi'immest recesses. 

The first scientific exploration of this deadly area was Lieu- 
tenant Wheeler's United States survey in the early fifties ; and 



THE AMERICAN SAHARA. 31 

he was fli*st to give scientific assurance that we have here a 
desert as absolute as the Sahara. If its parched sands could 
speak their record, what a story they might tell of unearth- 
ly sufferings and raving death ; of slow-plodding caravans, 
whose patient oxen lifted their feet ceaselessly from the blis- 
tering gravel and bawled with agony 5 of drawn human faces 
that peered hungiily at yon lying image of a placid lake, and 
toiled frantically on to sink at last, hopeless and strengthless, 
in the hot dust which the mirage had painted with the hues 
and the very waves of water ; and whose were the ghastly 
relics that whiten there to-day, uncrumbled after a generation 
of exposui*e to the dryest air on the globe ! 

No one will ever know how many have laid their gaunt 
forms to the long sleep in that inhospitable land 5 but the 
number runs up into the thousands. Not a year passes, even 
now, without record of many deaths upon that desert, and 
of many more who wander back, crazed with the delirium of 
thirst, and are taken to a kindlier clime only to die there. 
Even people at the raih'oad stations sometimes rove off, 
lured by the strange fascination of the desert, and never 
come back; and of the adventurous miners who seek to 
probe the golden secrets of those barren and strange-hued 
ranges, there are countless victims. 

A desert is not necessarily an endless, level waste of burn- 
ing sand ; and the Great American Desert is far from it. It 
is full of strange, burnt, ragged mountain ranges, with de- 
ceptive, sloping broad valleys between — though as we near 
its southern end the mountains become somewhat less nu- 



32 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

merous, and the sandy wastes more prominent. There are 
countless extinct volcanoes upon it, and hundfeds of square 
miles of black, bristling lava-flows. A majority of it is 
sparsely clothed with the hardy greasewood 5 but in places 
not a plant of any sort breaks the sui'face, far as the eye can 
reach. The summer heat is inconceivable, often reaching 
130° in the shade j and a piece of metal which has lain in 
the sun can no more be handled than could a red-hot stove. 
Even in winter the midday heat is sometimes insufferable, 
while at night ice frequently forms on the water- tanks. The 
daily range of temperatm^e there is said to be the greatest 
ever recorded anywhere ; and a change of 80° in a few hours 
is not rare. Such violent variations are extremely trying to 
the human system ; and among the few people who live on 
the edges of the hottest of lands, pneumonia is the commonest 
of diseases ! The scattered telegraph-offices along the rail- 
road are all built with two roofs, a couple of feet apart, that 
the free passage of air may partially counteract the fearful 
down-beating of the sun. There are oases in the desert, too, 
chief of which are the narrow valleys of the Mojave River 
and the lower Colorado. It is a strange thing to see that 
soft green ribbon athwart the molten landscape — between 
lines as sharp-drawn as a fence, on one side of which all is 
verdant life, and on the other, but a foot away, all death and 
desolation. 

The contorted ranges, which seem to have been dropped 
down upon the waste, rather than upheaved from it, are very 
rich in gold and silver, — a fact which has lured countless 



THE AMERICAN SAHARA. 33 

victims to death. Their strange colors have given an appro- 
priate name to one of the largest silver-producing districts 
in the United States — that of Calico. The curiously blended 
browns and reds of these igneous rocks do make them 
strongly resemble the antiquated calicoes of our grand- 
mothers. 

As would be inferred from its temperature, the desert is a 
land of fearful winds. When that stupendous volume of hot 
air rises by its own lightness — as hot air always must rise, a 
principle which was the foundation of ballooning— other air 
from the surrounding world must rush in to take its place ; 
and as the new ocean of atmosphere, greater than the Medi- 
terranean, pours in in stupendous waves to its desert bed, 
such winds result as few in fertile lands ever dreamed of. 
The Arabian simoom is not deadlier than the sand-storm of 
the Colorado Desert (as the lower half is generally called). 
Express-trains cannot make head against it — nay, they are 
even sometimes forced from the track ! Upon the crests of 
some of the ranges are hundreds of acres buried deep in the 
fine, white sand that those fearful gales pluck up by car-loads 
from the plain and lift on high to fling upon the scowling 
peaks thousands of feet above. There are no snow-drifts to 
blockade trains there ; but it is sometimes necessary to shovel 
through more troublesome drifts of sand. Man or beast 
caught in one of those sand-laden tempests has little chance 
of escape. The man who will lie with his head tightly 
wrapped in coat or blanket and stifle there until the fury of 
the storm is spent may survive ; but woe to the poor brute 
3 



34 



SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 



whose swift feet cannot bear it betimes to a place of refuge. 
There is no facing or breathing that atmosphere of alkaline 
sand, whose lightest whiff inflames eyes, nose, and throat 
abnost past endiu'ance. The sand-storm suffocates its vlc- 




VIEW AMONG THE CACTI. 



tims and buries them — perhaps to uncover them again only 
after the lapse of years. 

The few rivers of the American Desert are as strange and 
as treacherous as its winds. The Colorado is the only large 
stream of them all, and the only one which behaves like an 
ordinary river. It is always turbid — and gets its Spanish 



THE AMERICAN SAHARA. 35 

name, which means " the Red," from the color of its tide. 
The smaller streams are almost invariably clear in dry 
weather j but in a time of rain they become torrents not so 
much of sandy water as of Hquid sand ! I have seen them 
rolling down in freshets with four-foot waves which seemed 
simply sand in flow j and it is a fact that the bodies of those 
who are drowned at such times are abnost never recovered. 
The strange river buries them forever in its own sands. All 
these rivers have heads j but hardly one of them has a mouth ! 
They rise in the mountains on the edge of some happier land, 
flow away out into the desert, making a green gladness 
where their waters touch, and soon are swallowed up forever 
by the thirsty sands. The Mojave, for instance, is a beauti- 
ful little stream, clear as crystal through the summer, only a 
foot or so in depth, but a couple of hundred feet wide. It is 
fifty or sixty miles long, and its upper valley is a narrow 
paradise, green with tall grasses and noble cotton- woods that 
recall the stately elms of the Connecticut VaUey. But lower 
down the grass gives place to barren sand-banks j the hard- 
ier trees, whose roots bore deep to drink, grow small and 
stragghng ; and at last it dies altogether upon the arid plain, 
and leaves beyond a desert as utter as that which crowds its 
whole bright oasis-ribbon on either side but cannot encroach 
thereon. 

It is a very curious fact that this American Sahara, over 
fifteen hundred miles long from north to south, and nearly 
half as wide, serves to trip the very seasons. On its one side 
the rains aU come in the summer; but on the Pacific side 



36 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

they are invarial)!}^ in the winter, and a shower between 
March and October is ahnost as nnheard of as the prover- 
bial thunder from a ch>ndless sky. 

In the southern portions of the desert are many strange 
freaks of vegetable life — huge cacti sixty feet tall, and as 
large around as a barrel, with singular arms which make 
them look like gigantic candelabra ; smaller but equally fan- 
tastic varieties of cactus, from the tall, lithe ocaliJJa, or whip- 
stock cactus, down to the tiny knob smaller than a china cup, 
whose innocent-looking needles give it a roseate halo. The 
blossoms of these strange vegetable pin-cushions (whose pins 
all have their points outward) are invariably brilliant and 
beautiful. There are countless more modest flowers, too, in 
the rainy season, and thousands of square miles are carpeted 
thick with a floral carpet which makes it hard for the trav- 
eler to believe that he is really gazing upon a desert. There 
are even date-palms, those quaint ragged childi^en of the trop- 
ics ; and they have very appropriate company. Few people 
are aware that there are wild camels in North America, but 
it is none the less true. Many years ago a number of these 
''ships of the desert" were imported from Africa by an en- 
terprising Yankee who pur230sed to use them in freighting 
across the American Sahara. The scheme failed ; the camels 
escaped to the desert, made themselves at home, and there 
they roam to-day, w^ild as deer but apparently prospering, 
and now and then frightening the wits nearly out of some 
ignorant prospector who strays into their grim domain. 

There are in this desert weird and deadly valleys which 



THE AMERICAN SAHARA. 37 

are hundreds of feet below the level of the sea ; vast depos- 
its of pure salt, borax, soda, and other minerals ; remark- 
able " mud- volcanoes,'' or geysers 5 wonderful mirages and 
supernatural atmospheric effects, and many other wonders. 
The intensely dry air is so clear that distance seems annihi- 
lated, and the eye loses its reckoning. Objects twenty miles 
away look to be within an easy half -hour's walk. There are 
countless dry beds of prehistoric and accursed lakes — some 
of them of great extent — in whose alkaline dust no plant 
can grow, and upon which a puddle of rain-water becomes 
an almost deadly poison. In the mountain-passes are trails 
where the pattering feet of mangy and starveling coyotes for 
thousands of years have worn a path six inches deep in the 
soHd limestone. Gaunt ravens sail staring over the wan 
plains ; and hairy tarantulas hop ; and the side-winder — the 
deadly, horned rattlesnake of the desert, which gets its nick- 
name from its peculiar sidehng motion — crawls across the 
burning sands, or basks in the terrific sun which only he and 
the lizards, of all created things, can enjoy. 

The " Salton Sea,'^ about which so much undeserved sensa- 
tion and mystery were made recently, is not a sea at all, but 
a huge puddle of " back water " from the Colorado River. It 
had been dry for a great while ; but the river in 1891, in a 
freshet, broke its banks and again filled the shallow basin. 
The water is brackish because the overflowed vaUey contains 
great salt deposits. 

The most fatally famous part of the Great American 
Desert is Death Valley, in California. There is on aU the 



38 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

globe no other spot so forbidding, so desolate, so deadly. It 
is a concentration of the hideousness of that whole hideous 
area ; and it has a bitter history. 

One of the most interesting and graphic stories I ever 
listened to was that related to me, several years ago, by one 
of the sui'vivors of the famous Death Valley party of 1849 
— Rev. J. W. Brier, an aged Methodist clergyman now living 
in California, who preached the first Protestant sermon in 
Los Angeles. A party of five hundred emigrants started 
on the last day of September, 1849, from the southern end 
of Utah to cross the desert to the new mines of California. 
There were one hundred and five canvas-topped wagons, 
drawn by sturdy oxen, beside which trudged the shaggy men, 
rifle in hand, while under the canvas awnings rode the women 
and children. In a short time there was division of opinion 
as to the proper route across that pathless waste in front ; 
and next day five wagons and their people went east to reach 
Santa Fe (whence there were dim Mexican trails to Los An- 
geles), and the rest plunged boldly into the desert. The party 
which went via Santa Fe reached California in December, 
after vast sufferings. The larger company traveled in com- 
fort for a few days until they reached about where Pioche 
now is. Then they entered the Land of Thirst; and for 
more than three months wandered lost in that inconceivable 
realm of horror. It was almost impossible to get wagons 
through a country furrowed with canons ; and presently they 
aT)andoned their vehicles, packing what they could upon the 
backs of the oxen. They struggled on to glittering lakes, 



THE AMERICAN SAHARA. 



39 



only to find them deadly poison, or but a mirage on barren 
sands. Now and then a wee spring in the mountains gave 
them new life. One by one the oxen dropped, day by day 
the scanty flour ran lower. Nine young men, who separated 
from the rest, being stalwart and unencumbered with fami- 




REV. J. W. BRIER. 



lies, strayed into Death Valley ahead of the others, succumbed 
to its deadly thirst, and, crawling into a little volcanic bowl 
to escape the Cold winds of night, left then* cuddled bones 
there — where they were found many years later by Gov- 



40 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

ernor Blaisdell and his surveyorSj who gave Death Valley its 
name. The valley lies in Inyo County, and is about one 
hundred and fifty miles long. In width it tapers from three 
miles at its southern end to thu'ty at the northern. It is 
over two hundred feet below the sea-level. Most of Inyo 
County is a great plateau, averaging 5000 feet in altitude ; 
and in it, in the south end of the Sienna Nevada range, tow- 
ers the loftiest peak in the United States — Mount Wliitney, 
15,000 feet. So, as you may imagine, there is a terrible 
" jumping-off-place " when one comes to the brink of this 
accursed valley. From 5000 feet above sea-level to 200 feet 
beloiv it is a good deal of a drop ; and in places it f aii'ly looks 
as if one might take it at a single jump. The valley is walled 
on each side by savage and appalling cliifs which rise thou- 
sands of feet in apparently sheer walls. There are but few 
places where the valley can well be crossed from side to side ; 
for by the time one has trudged over those miles of alkali 
one is generally too far gone to climb up the farther rocks 
to safety. It is the very last place. There is nothing so 
deadly even in the hottest parts of Africa. Not even a bird 
flies across that hideous waste — nature is absolutely lifeless 
there. It is the dry est place in the world — the place where one 
will soonest die of thirst, and where the victim soon becomes 
a perfect mummy. When the melting snows of the SieiTa 
Nevada come roaring down the slopes in great torrents, they 
do not reach the bottom of Death Valley. Long before the 
stream can get there it is swallowed up into the thirsty air 
and thii'stier sands. The main party of pioneers crossed 



THE AMERICAN SAHARA. 41 

Death Valley at about the middle, where it is but a few miles 
wide, but suffered frightfully there. With every day their 
tortures grew worse. The gaunt oxen were so nearly dead 
that their meat was rank poison j and at last the starving 
band had no food for four weeks save ox-hide scorched and 
then boiled to a bitter jelly. Day by day some of their num- 
ber sank upon the burning sands, never to rise again. The 
skeleton survivors were too weak to help the fallen. One 
poor fellow named Isham revived enough to crawl four awful 
miles on his hands and knees in pursuit of his companions, 
and then died. 

The strongest of the whole party was wee, nervous Mrs. 
Brier, who had come to Colorado an invahd, and who shared 
Avith her boys of four, seven, and nine years that indescriba- 
ble tramp of nine hundred miles. For the last three weeks 
she had to lift her athletic husband from the ground every 
morning, and steady him a few moments before he could 
stand 5 and help w^asted giants who a few months before 
could have held her upon their palms. 

At last the few dying survivors crossed the range which 
shuts off that most dreadful of deserts from the garden of the 
world, and were tenderly nursed to health at the hacienda of 
a courtly Spaniard. Mr. Brier had wasted from one hundred 
and seventy-five pounds to seventy-five, and the others in 
proportion. When I saw him last he was a hale old man of 
seventy-five, cheerful and active, but with strange furrows in 
his face to tell of those by-gone sufferings. His heroic little 
wife was still Hving, and the boys, who had had a bitter ex- 



42 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

perience such as perhaps no other boys ever sui-vived, are 
stalwart men. 

The Great American Desert reaches from Idaho to the 
Gulf of California and down into Mexico j and embraces 
portions of Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and 
California. There have been numerous schemes to reclaim 
parts of it — even to turning the Colorado River into its 
southern basins— but aU the ingenuity of man wiU never 
change most of it from the irredeemable and fearful wil- 
derness it is to-day. 




IV. 





THE RATTLESNAKE DANCE 

and about the edges of the Great American 
Desert are many of the strangest corners. It 
seems as if Nature has crowded her curiosities 
into that strangest and most forbidding of mu- 
seums, that they may not be too easily found. 
A hundred miles north of the Petrified Forest, and well 
into the edge of the Arizona desert, are the seven strange 
and seldom visited Pueblo cities of Moqui. They all have 
wildly unpronounceable names: Hualpi, Si-chom-ivi, Shim- 
o-pavi, Shi-paui-luvi, Oraibe, and Mishongop-avi ; and aU are 
built on the summits of almost inaccessible mesas — islands 
of sohd rock, whose generally perpendicular cliff-waUs rise 
high from the surrounding plain. They are very remarka- 
ble towns in appearance, set upon dizzy sites, with quaint 
terraced houses of abode, and queer little corrals for the ani- 
mals in nooks and angles of the cliff, and giving far outlook 
across the browns and yellows, and the spectral peaks of that 
weii'd plain. But they look not half so remarkable as they 
are. The most remote from civilization of all the Pueblos, 
the least affected by the Spanish influence which so wonder- 



THE RATTLESNAKE DANCE. 45 

fully ruled over the enormous area of the southwest, and 
practically untouched by the later Saxon influence, the In- 
dians of the Moqui towns retain almost entirely their wonder- 
ful customs of before the conquest. They number eighteen 
hundred souls. Their languages are different from those of 
any other of the Pueblos ;* and their mode of life — though to 
a hasty glance the same — is in many ways unlike that of 
their brethren in New Mexico. They are the best weavers 
in America, except the once remarkable but now less skilful 
Navajos ; and their manfas (the characteristic black woolen 
dresses of Pueblo women) and dancing-girdles are so famous 
that the Indians of the Rio Grande valley often travel tliree 
hundi'ed miles or more, on foot or on deUberate burros, 
simply to trade for the long-wearing products of the rude, 
home-made looms of Moqui. The Moquis also make valu- 
able and very curious fur blankets by twisting the skins of 
rabbits into ropes, and then sewing these together — a cus- 
tom which Coronado found among them tliree hundred and 
fifty years ago, before there were any sheep to yield wool for 
such fabrics as they now weave, and when their only dress 
materials were skins and the cotton they raised. 

It is in these strange, chff -perched little cities of the Hiipi 
(" the people of peace," as the Moquis call themselves) that 
one of the most astounding barbaric dances in the world is 
held ; for it even yet exists. Africa has no savages whose 

* Except that the one Moqui village of Tehua speaks the language of 
the Tehuas on the Rio Grande, whence its people came as refugees 
after the great Pueblo Rebellion of 1680. 



46 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

mystic performances are more wonderful than the Moqiii 
snake-dance — and as much may be said for many of the 
other secret rites of the Pueblos. 

The snake is an object of great respect among all uncivil- 
ized peoples ; and the deadlier his power, the deeper the rev- 
erence for him. The Pueblos often protect in then* houses 
an esteemed and harmless serpent — about five or six feet 
long — as a mouse- trap j and these quiet mousers keep down 
the Little pests much more effectively than a cat, for they can 
follow sJiee-kl-deh to the ultimate corner of his hole. 

But while all snakes are to be treated well, the Pueblo 
holds the rattlesnake actually sacred. It is, except the inehii- 
cudte (a real asp), the only venomous reptile in the southwest, 
and the only one dignified by a place among the " Trues." 
The ch'ah-rah-rdh-deh * is not really worshiped by the Pueblos, 
but they beheve it one of the sacred animals which are use- 
ful to the Trues, and ascribe to it wonderf id powers. Up to 
a generation ago it played in the marvelous and difficult su- 
perstitions of this people a much more important part than 
it does now ; and every Pueblo town used to maintain a huge 
rattlesnake, which was kept in a sacred room, and with great 
solemnity fed once a year. My own pueblo of Isleta used to 
support a sacred rattler in the volcanic caves of the Cerro 
del Aire,t but it escaped five years ago, and the patient 
search of the officials failed to recover it. Very truthful old 

* The Tee-wahn name is imitative, resembling the rattling. The 
Moquis call the rattlesnake clm-ah. 
t Hill of the wind. 



48 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

men here have told me that it was nearly as large around as 
my body j and I can believe it with just a little allowance, for 
I myself have seen one here as large as tlie thickest part of 
my leg. 

There are many gruesome stories of human sacrifices to 
these snakes, the commonest tale being that a baby was 
chosen by lot from the pueblo once a year to be fed to cWali- 
rah-rdh-deJi. But this is of coui-se a foolish fable. There are 
no traces that the Pueblos ever practised human sacrifice in 
any shape, even in prehistoric times; and the very gi^and- 
father of all the rattlesnakes could no more swallow the 
smallest baby than he could fly. 

Tliis snake-tending has died out in nearly — and now, per- 
haps, in quite — all the New Mexican pueblos; but the curi- 
ous trait still survives in the towns of Moqui. Every second 
year, when the August moon reaches a certain stage (in 1891 
it occurred on the 21st), the wonderful ceremony of the snake- 
dance is performed ; and the white men who have witnessed 
these weu'd rites will never forget them. 

For sixteen days beforehand the professional " Snake-men " 
have been in solemn preparation for the great event, sit- 
ting in their sacred rooms, which are carved in the solid 
rock. For many days before the dance (as before nearly 
aU such ceremonies with the Pueblos) no food must pass 
their lips, and they can drink only a bitter " tea/' called mdh- 
que-he, mside from a secret herb which gives them security 
against snake-poison. They also rub their bodies with pre- 
pared herbs. 



THE RATTLESNAKE DANCE. 49 

Six days before the date of the dance the Snake-men go 
down the mesa into the plain and hunt eastward for rattle- 
snakes. Upon finding one^ the hunter tickles the angry rep- 
tile with the " snake-whip " — a sacred bunch of eagle feathers 
— until it tries to run. Then he snatches it up and puts it 
into a bag. On the next day the hunt is to the north ; the 
third day to the west ; the foui'th day to the south — which is, 
you must know, the only possible order in which a Pueblo 
dares to " box the compass." To start fii'st south or north 
would be a dreadful impiety in his eyes. The captured 
snakes are then kept in the hiJjva (sacred room called ^' estufa" 
in the other pueblos), where they crawl about in dangerous 
freedom among the solemn deliberators. The night before 
the dance the snakes are all cleansed with great solemnity at 
an altar which the Snake-captain has made of colored sands 
drawn in a strange design. 

The place where the dance is held is a small open court, 
with the three-story houses crowding it on the west, and the 
brink of the cliff bounding it on the east. Several sacred 
rooms, hollowed from the rock, are along this court, and the 
tall ladders which lead into them are visible in the picture. 
At the south end of the court stands the sacred Dance-rock 
— a natural pillar, about fourteen feet high, left by water- 
wearing upon the rock floor of the mesa's top. Midway from 
this to the north end of the cornet has been constructed the 
liee-si, or sacred booth of cotton- wood branches, its opening 
closed by a cui'tain. Just in front of this a shallow cavity 
has been dug, and then covered with a strong and ancient 
4 



50 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

plaiik with a hole in one side. This covered cavity repre- 
sents Sln-2)a-pu, the great Bhick Lake of Tears, — a name so 
sacred that few Indians will speak it aloud, — whence, accord- 
ing to the common behef of all southwestern Indians, the 
human race first came. 

On the day of the dance the Captain of the Snake-men 
places all the snakes in a large buckskin bag, and deposits 
this in the booth. All the other active participants are, still 
in their room, going through their mysterious prej)arations. 
Just before sunset is the invariable time for the dance. 

Long before the hour, the housetops and the edges of the 
court are lined with an expectant throng of spectators : the 
earnest Moquis, a goodly representation of the Navajos, whose 
reservation Ues just east, and a few white men. At about 
half -past five in the afternoon the twenty men of the Ante- 
lope Order emerge from their own special room in single file, 
march thrice around the court, and go through certain sa- 
cred ceremonies in front of the booth. Here their captain 
sprinkles them with a consecrated fluid from the tip of an 
eagle feather. For a few moments they dance and shake 
their gnajes (ceremonial rattles made of gourds) in front of 
the booth ; and then they are ranged beside it, ^dth their 
backs against the wall of the houses. Among them are the 
youngsters that day admitted to the order in wliich they will 
thenceforward receive life-long training — dimpled tots of 
from four to seven years old, who look extremely '^ cunning " 
in their strange regimentals. 

Now all is ready ; and in a moment a buzz in the crowd 



THE RATTLESNAKE DANCE. 53 

announces the coining of the seventeen priests of the Snake 
Order through the roofed alley just south of the Dance-rock. 
These seventeen enter the coui't in a single file at a rapid 
gait, and make the circuit of the court four times, stamping 
hard with the right foot upon the sacred plank that covers 
Shi-pa-pii as they pass in front of the booth. This is to let 
the CacJiinas (spirits, or divinities) know that the dancers are 
now presenting their prayers. 

When the captain of the Snake Order reaches the booth, 
on the fourth circuit, the procession halts. The captain 
kneels in front of the booth, thrusts his right arm behind the 
curtain, unties the sack, and in a moment draws out a big, 
squirming rattlesnake. This he holds with his teeth about 
six inches back of the ugly triangular head, and then he rises 
erect. The Captain of the Antelope Order steps forward and 
puts his left arm around .the Snake-captain's neck, while with 
the snake-whip in his right hand he " smooths " the wiithing 
reptile. The two start forward in the peculiar hippety-hop, 
hop, hippety-hop of all Pueblo dances ; the next Snake-priest 
draws forth a snake from the booth, and is joined by the 
next Antelope-man as partner ; and so on, until each of the 
Snake-men is dancing with a deadly snake in his mouth, and 
an Antelope-man accompanying him. 

The dancers hop in pairs thus from the booth to the Dance- 
rock, thence north, and cii'cle toward the booth again. 
When they reach a certain point, which completes about 
three-quarters of the circle, each Snake-man gives his head a 
sharp snap to the left, and thereby throws his snake to the 



54 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

rock floor of the com-t, inside the ring of dancers, and dances 
on to the booth again, to extract a fresh snake and make 
another round. 

There are three more Antelope-men than Snake-men, and 
these three have no partners in the dance, but are intrusted 
with the duty of gathering up the snakes thus set free and 
putting them back into the booth. The snakes sometimes 
run to the crowd — a ticklish affair for those jammed upon 
the very brink of the precipice. In case they run, the three 
official gatherers snatch them up without ado; but if they 
coil and show fight, these Antelope-men tickle them with the 
snake-whips until they uncoil and try to glide away, and then 
seize them with the rapidity of lightning. Frequently these 
gatherers have five or six snakes in their hands at once. 
The reptiles are as deadly as ever — not one has had its 
fangs extracted ! 

In the 1891 dance over one hundi-ed snakes were used. 
Of these about sixty-five were rattlesnakes. I stood within 
six feet of the circle; and one man (a dancer) who came 
close to me was bitten. The snake which he held in his 
mouth suddenly turned and struck him upon the right cheek. 
His Antelope companion unhooJced the snake, which hung by 
its recurving fangs, and threw it upon the ground ; and the 
pair continued the dance as if nothing had happened ! An- 
other man a little farther from me, but plainly seen, was bit- 
ten on the hand. 

I never knew one of them to be seriously affected by a 
rattlesnake's bite. They pay no attention to the (to others) 



THE RATTLESNAKE DANCE. 55 

deadly stroke of that hideous mouth, which opens flat as a 
palm and smites exactly like one, but dance and sing in ear- 
nest unconcern. There is in existence one photograph which 
clearly shows the dancers with the snakes in their mouths — 
and only one. Beginning so late, and in the deep shadow 
of the tah houses, it is almost impossible for the dance to be 
photographed at all ; but one year a lucky reflector of dense 
white cloud came up just before sunset and threw a light into 
that dark corner, and Mr. Wittick got the only perfect pic- 
ture extant of the snake-dance. I have made pictures which 
do show the snakes ; but they are not handsome pictures of 
the dance. The make-up of the dancers makes photography 
still harder. Their faces are painted black to the mouth, and 
white from that to the neck. Their bodies, naked to the 
waist, are painted a dark lake-red. They wear curious danc- 
ing-skirts to the knee, with beautiful fox-skins dangling be- 
hind, but nothing on their legs except rattles and sacred 
twigs at the ankle. 

At last all rush together at the foot of the Dance-rock and 
throw all their snakes into a horrid heap of threatening heads 
and buzzing tails. I have seen that hillock of rattlesnakes a 
foot high and four feet across. For a moment the dancers 
leap about the writhing pile, while the sacred corn-meal is 
sprinkled. Then they thrust each an arm into that squirming 
mass, grasp a number of snakes, and go running at top 
speed to the four points of the compass. Reaching the bot- 
tom of the great mesa (Hualpi,* where the chief snake-dance 

* Pronounced Wol-pi. 



56 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

is held, is six Imndred and sixty feet above the plain), they 
release the unharmed serpents. 

These astounding rites last from half an hour to an hour, 
and end only when the hot sun has fallen behind the bald 
western desert. Then the dancers go to their sacred purifi- 
cation mth the secret herb, and the awed on-lookers scatter 
to their quaint homes, rejoicing at the successful conclusion 
of the most important of all the public ceremonials of Moqui. 
It is believed by the Hiipi that the rattlesnake was one of 
their fii'st ancestors — the son of the Moqui Adam and Eve — 
and they have a very long and comphcated folk-story about 
it. The snake- dance is therefore — among other superstitious 
aims — designed to please their divinities. 

In the ^'neck" or '^saddle" which connects the fii'st of the 
Moqui " islands " of rock with the main table-land is a shrine 
of great importance. It is a little inclosure of slabs of stone 
smTOunding a large stone fetich which has been carved into 
a conventional representation of the sacred snake. In two 
small natural cavities of the Dance-rock are also kept other 
large fetiches — both the latter being limestone concretions 
of peculiar shape. 

This snake-dance seems to have been common to all the 
Pueblo towns in ancient times. Espejo saAV it in Acoma in 
1581 ; and there are to this day in other towns customs which 
seem to be survivals of this strange ceremony. In Isleta 
there are still men who have ^' power of snakes," and know 
how to charm them by putting the sacred corn-meal and com- 
pollen on their heads — a practice which figures extensively 
in their folk-lore. 



THE RATTLESNAKE DANCE. 57 

The Moqiiis make great numbers of remarkable-looking 
dolls for tlieii' children to play withj and in nearly every 
house some of these strange effigies are to be seen. They 
are toys for the youngsters, but not merely toys — they are 
also a sort of kindergarten course. They are called cachinas, 
and are supposed to represent the spirits in which the Mo- 
quenos believe. They are very clever representations of the 
outlandish figures of the masked men who take part in many 
ceremonial dances — these maskers, of course, being also sup- 
posed to look like the unseen but potent spirits. So a Moqui 
child very soon learns what the various spirits look like. 

One of the oddities which a stranger will first notice in 
Moqui is the fashion in which the women di^ess their hair. 
The young girls have their abundant black locks done up in 
two large and very peculiar coils, one behind each ear. These 
coils stand far out from the head, like huge black buttons, and 
give a startling appearance to the wearer. Sometimes you 
would fancy that she has a pair of short, curving horns. But 
on close inspection one of these coils is found to resemble 
nothing else so much as a black squash-blossom in its full 
bloom — and that is exactly what it is designed to typify. 
Among the Hiipi the squash-blossom is the emblem of 
maidenhood. Before marriage a girl must always wear her 
hair thus ; but after marriage she must dress it in two pen- 
dent rolls, one by each ear. These rolls are supposed to re- 
semble — and do resemble — the long, closed squash-blossom. 




V. 

WHERE THEY BEG THE BEAR'S PARDON. 

is interesting to notice that the Navajo Indians, 
who are the nearest neighbors of the Moqnis, 
ha.ve snperstitions widely different thongh quite 
as benighted. They will not touch a snake un- 
der any circumstances. So extreme are their 
prejudices that one of their skilled silversmiths was beaten 
nearly to death by his fellows for making to my order a sil- 
ver bracelet which represented a rattlesnake 5 and the ob- 
noxious emblem was promptly destroyed by the raiders — 
along with the offendei^'s hut. 

Living almost wholly upon game as they do, the Navajos 
cannot be prevailed upon to taste either fish or rabbit. I 
have known some very ludicrous things to happen when 
meanly mischievous Americans deluded Navajos into eat- 
ing either of these forbidden dishes; and sometimes there 
have been very serious retaliations for the ill-mannered joke. 
Rabbits are wonderfully numerous in the Navajo country, 
being molested only by feathered and four-footed enemies ; 
but the Indian who would fight to the death sooner than 
touch a delicious rabbit-stew is greedily fond of the fat and 



WHERE THEY BEG THE BEAR'S PARDON. 59 

querulous prairie-dog. That whole region abounds in ^^ dog- 
towns/' and they are frequently besieged by their swarthy 
foes. A Navajo will stick a bit of mirror in the entrance of 
a burrow^, and lie behind the little mound all day, if need 
be, to secure the coveted prize. When Mr. Tiisa ventures 
from his bedroom, deep underground, he sees a famihar im- 
age mocking him at the front door j and when he hiu*ries 
out to confront this impudent intruder, whiz ! goes a chal- 
cedony-tipped arrow through him, pinning him to the ground 
so that he cannot tumble back into his home, as he has a 
wonderful faculty for doing even in death 5 or a dark hand 
darts from behind hke lightning, seizes his chunky neck 
safely beyond the reach of his chisel-shaped teeth, and breaks 
his spine with one swift snap. 

But when the summer rains come, then is woe indeed to 
the populous communities of these ludicrous little rodents. 
As soon as the downpour begins, every adjacent Navajo be- 
tween the ages of three and ninety repairs to the tusa vil- 
lage. They bring rude hoes, sharpened sticks, and knives, and 
every one who is able to dig at all falls to work, unmind- 
ful of the drenching. In a very short time a lot of little 
trenches are dug, so as to lead the storm- water to the mouths 
of as many burrows as possible ; and soon a little stream is 
pouring down each. 

" Mercy ! '^ says Mr. Tusa to his fat wife and dozen chubby 
youngsters ; "I wish we could elect aldermen that would at- 
tend to the drainage of this town ! It 's a shame to have our 
cellars flooded like this ! " — and out he pops to see what can 



60 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

be done. The ouly thing he can do is to swell the sad heap 
of his fellow-citizens, over which strange two-footed babies, 
far bigger than his, are shouting in wild glee. Such a rain- 
hunt often nets the Navajos many hundred pounds of prairie- 
dogs J and then there is feasting for many a day in the rude, 
cold hog mis, or huts of sticks and dirt which are the only 
habitation of these Indians. 

With the Pueblos, the mountain-lion or cougar is the king 
of beasts — following our civilized idea very closely; but 
with the Navajos the bear holds first rank. He is not only 
the greatest, wisest, and most powerful of brutes, but even 
surpasses man ! The Navajo is a brave and skilled warrior, 
and would not fear the bear for its deadly teeth and claws, 
but of its supposed supernatural powders he is in mortal 
dread. I have offered a Navajo shepherd, w^ho had accident- 
ally discovered a bear's cave, twenty dollars to show it to me, 
or even to tell me in what canon it lay ; but he refused, in a 
manner and with words which showed me that if I found the 
cave I would be in danger from more than the bear. The 
Indian was a very good friend of mine, too ; but he was sure 
that if he were even the indirect cause of any harm to the 
bear, the bear would know it and kill him and aU his family ! 
So even my princely offer was no inducement to a man who 
was working hard for five dollars a month. 

There is only one case in which the Navajos will meddle 
with a bear. That is when he has killed a Navajo, and the 
Indians know exactly which bear is the murderer. Then a 
strong, armed party, headed by the proper religious officers 



WHERE THEY BEG THE BEAR'S PARDON. 61 

(medicine-men), proceed to the cave of the bear. Halting a 
short distance in front of the den, they go through a strange 
service of apology, which to us would seem entirely ludicrous, 
but to them is unutterably solemn. The praises of the bear, 
commander of beasts, are loudly sung, and his pardon is 
humbly invoked for the unpleasant deed to which they are 
now di'iven ! Having duly apologized beforehand, they pro- 
ceed as best they may to kill the bear, and then go home to 
fast and purify themselves. This aboriginal greeting, ''I 
beg your pardon, and hope you will bear no resentment 
against me, but I have come to kill you," is quite as funny as 
the old farmer I used to know in New Hampshire, who was 
none too polite to his wife, but always addi^essed his oxen 
thus : " Now, if you please, whoa hish, Bary ! Also Bonny ! 
There ! Thank you ! " 

The Navajos also make frequent prayers and sacrifices to 
the bear. 

Under no circumstances will a Navajo touch even the skin 
of a bear. The equally dangerous mountain-lion he hunts 
eagerly, and its beautiful, tawny hide is his proudest trophy 
outside of war, and the costliest material for his quivers, 
bow-cases, and rifle-sheaths. Nor will he touch a coyote. 

A Navajo mil never enter a house in which death has 
been, and his wild domain is full of huts abandoned forever. 
Nor after he is married dare he ever see his wife's mother ; 
and if by any evil chance he happens to catch a glimpse of 
her, it takes a vast amount of fasting and prayer before he 
feels secure from dangerous results. The grayest and most 



62 



SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 



diguified chief is not above walking backward, running like 
a scared boy, or hiding his head in his blanket, to avoid the 
dreaded sight. 

Feathers figure very prominently in the religious customs 
of most aborigines, and remarkably so in the southwest. 
Among Navajos and Pueblos alike these plume-symbols are 










PUEBLO PRAYER-STICKS. 



of the utmost efficacy for good or bad. They are part of ah 
most every ceremonial of the infinite superstitions of these 
tribes. Any white or bright-hued plume is of good omen — 
"good medicine," as the Indian would put it. The gay 
feathers of the parrot are particularly valuable, and some 
dances cannot be held without them, though the Indians have 
to travel hundreds of miles into Mexico to get them. A pea- 



WHERE THEY BEG THE BEAR'S PARDON. 63 

cock is harder to keep in the vicinity of Indians than the 
finest horse — those brilliant plumes are too tempting. 

Eagle feathers are of sovereign value ; and in most of the 
pueblos great, dark, captive eagles are kept to furnish the 
coveted articles for most important occasions. If the bird of 
freedom were suddenly exterminated now, the whole Indian 
economy would come to a standstill. No witches could be 
exorcised, nor sickness cured, nor much of anything else 
accomplished. 

Dark feathers, and those in particular of the owl, buzzard, 
woodpecker, and raven, are unspeakably accursed. No one 
will touch them except those who " have the evil road," — that 
is, are witches, — and any Indian found with them in his or 
her possession would be officially tried and officially put to 
death ! Such feathers are used only in secret by those who 
wish to kill or harm an enemy, in whose path they are laid 
with wicked wishes that ill-fortune may foUow. 

How many of my young countrymen who have read of 
the '' prayer- wheels " of Burmah, and the paper prayers of 
the Chinese, know that there is a mechanical prayer used 
by thousands of people in the United States ? The Pueblo 
"prayer-stick" is quite as curious a device as those of the 
heathen Orient ; and the feather is the chief part of it. 

Prowling in sheltered ravines about any Pueblo town, the 
curiosity-seeker will find, stuck in the ground, carefully 
whittled sticks, each with a tuft of downy feathers (generally 
white) bound at the top. 

Each of these sticks is a prayer — and none the less earnest 



64 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

and sincere because so misguided. Around the remote pue- 
blo of Zufii I have counted over three thousand of these 
strange invocations in one day's ramble j but never a tithe 
as many by any other pueblo. 

According to the nature of the prayer, the stick, the 
feathers, and the manner of tying them vary. The Indian 
who has a favor to ask of the Trues prepares his feather- 
prayer with great solemnity and secrecy, takes it to a proper 
spot, prays to all Those Above, and plants the prayer-stick 
that it may continue his petition after he has gone home. 

This use of the feather is also shared by the Navajos ; and 
so is what may be called the smoke-prayer, in which the 
smoke of the sacred cigarette is blown east, north, west, 
south, up and down, to scare away the evil spirits and please 
the good ones. 

In a corner of the Navajo country, too, is another cimosity 
of which few Americans are aware — a catacomb of genuine 
mummies ! This is in the grim Canon de Tsay-ee, — igno- 
rantly called '' du CheUe,'' — which is lined along the ledges of 
its dizzy cliffs with the prehistoric houses of the so-caUed 
Cliff-dwellers. These were not an unknown race at all, but 
our own Pueblo Indians of the old dsijs when defense against 
savage neighbors was the first object in life. 

These stone houses, clinging far up the gloomy precipice, 
were inaccessible enough at best, and are doubh^ so now that 
their ladders have crumbled to dust. In them are many 
strange relics of prehistoric times, and in some the embahned 
bodies of their long-forgotten occupants. There is a stiU 



WHERE THEY BEG THE BEAR'S PARDON. 



65 



larger "deposit/' so to speak, of American mummies in the 
wildly picturesque San Juan country, in the extreme north- 
western corner of New Mexico and adjacent parts of Colorado 
and Utah. They are in similar cliff -built ruins, and belong 
*to the same strange race. So we have one of Egypt's famous 
wonders here at home. 

The largest Indian tribes of the Colorado desert have from 
time immemorial cremated theu^ dead on funeral pyres, after 
the fashion of the classic ancients and of modern India. All 
the property of the deceased is burned in the same flames, and 
the mourners add their own treasures to the pile. So prop- 
erty does not accumulate among the Mojaves, and there is 
no contesting of wills. 





PUEBLO HUNTING FETICHES. 



VI. 



THE witches' corner. 




[his very year at least one witch has been offi- 
cially put to death in the United States, after 
an official trial. Last year many witches were 
executed, and many the year before, and many 
the year before that — and so on back for centuries. Is n't 
that a strange corner of our own country of which you did 
not dream? I shall never forget the awe which filled me 
when, soon after coming to New Mexico, I found myself 
in a land of active mtchcraft. Of all the marvelous things 
in the unwritten southwest, the superstitions of the na- 
tives impressed me most deeply. I thought to have settled 
in New Mexico, U. S. A. ; but it seemed that I had moved 
into another world and into the century before last. To 
hear my neighbors gravely discussing the condition of so- 
and-so, who "had been bewitched"; to have this and that 
person pointed out to me with the warning ^' Cmdaclo de elJa 
— es hruja! " * to learn that an unfortunate was put to death 
yesterday "for being a witch" — it often made me pinch my- 
self to see if I were not dreaming. But it was no dream. 

* "Look out for her — she is a witch !" 



THE WITCHES' CORNER. 67 

The belief in witchcraft is a bitter reality in the wild south- 
west. There are some 175,000 souls in New Mexico, of 
whom fom* fifths can neither read nor write, and about 30,- 
000 of whom are Indians, 25,000 Americans, and the rest 
Mexicans. Of course the Americans have no faith in 
witches, nor do the educated Mexicans ; but all the Indians 
and probably ninety per cent, of the brave but ignorant 
Mexicans are firm believers in this astounding superstition. 
There are very few towns in this enormous territory most of 
whose people do not believe in and dread one or more re- 
puted witches among their own number ; and in the Pueblo 
towns and among the nomad Navajos and other Indians 
witches are so numerous as to be the greatest of aU dangers. 
In my own pueblo of Isleta, which numbers over eleven hun- 
dred souls, nearly haK the people are believed to be witches, 
and the only thing which prevents a bloody war upon them 
by the " True Believers " is fear of the Americans, of whom 
there are several thousands only twelve miles away. It is 
only a little while since a weU-known young Indian of this 
village was imprisoned and tortured (by the stocks and neck- 
yoke) on formal accusation that he was a witch ; and stiU less 
time since my neighbor two doors away was executed at mid- 
night, presumably for the same " crime " — since he was killed 
in the specific manner prescribed by Tigua customs for the 
slaying of witches. To keep down witchcraft is the foremost 
of&cial duty of the medicine-men 5 and when a witch is con- 
victed, on accusation and " proof," it is the office of one of 
the branches of medicine-men (the Jcimi-pali-tvhit-Iah-wen, or 



68 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

guards) to execute him or her by shooting with an arrow 
through the whole body from left side to right side. Isleta 
is now one of the most civihzed of the pueblos j its people 
are the kindest parents and the best neighbors I know ; and 
yet the supernatm^al dread of supernatural harm turns them 
at times as far from their real selves as were our own god- 
fearing forefathers in New England when they burned poor 
old women ahve. Sandia — a pueblo of the same tribe as 
Isleta (the Tiguas, or Tee-wahn) — a few leagues north of 
here, has been so decimated by the official killing-off of 
witches that it bids fair soon to become extinct ; and these 
executions still continue. The first business of all "medi- 
cine-makings" — which are not to compound remedies for 
sickness alone, though that is " cured " by remarkable means, 
but to avert all dangers and invoke all prosperities for the 
town, its people, its animals, its crops, etc. — is to drive away 
and punish all witches who can be reached. So in all prayers, 
all dances, and in fact in all ceremonies whatever, the first ser- 
vice is to disperse the evil spirits who may be hovering about. 
When a child is born there are numerous ceremonials to keep 
it from being appropriated by the witches. When a person 
dies, the four days which his soul will take to reach the other 
world are filled by the medicine-men with the most laborious 
and astounding incantations and charms, with smoke to blind 
the eyes of the witches, and with false trails and other de- 
vices to throw them oif the track of the journeying soul, lest 
they overtake it and swoop it away to the accursed land. 
It needs very little to lay an Indian open to the suspicion 



THE WITCHES' CORNER. 69 

of having " the evil road." If he have red eyes, as though he 
had been awake o' nights, instead of sleeping peacefully as 
a good Indian should, he is at once looked upon with distrust. 
If he have an enemy, and that enemy becomes sick, it is stiU 
more convincing. The medicine-men wiU proceed secretly to 
search the house of the suspected person ; and if they find 
any of the feathers of the accursed birds (the chief of which 
are the owl, raven, and woodpecker) or any other implements 
of witchcraft, his doom is sealed. To us it seems murder ; 
but it is as judicial as our civilized punishments, for the sen- 
tence is pronounced by the recognized judges, and carried 
out by the official executioners. There are numerous charms 
against witches — quite as valuable as our own horseshoe 
over the door — and the boundless folk-lore of this strange 
people is fuU of the doings of " those of the evil road," and of 
the retribution with which they are always \isited in the end. 

Witchcraft is a common faith to all aborigijies; so it is 
somewhat less surprising that the Pueblos believe in it, 
though they are so different from other Indians in so many 
important points.* But my first encounter with witches and 
witch-believers was more astounding, for the people were 
actual citizens and voters of this enlightened republic ! 

Among the uneducated mass of Mexicans — who are the 
vast majority of their people here — the belief in liecMseria or 
hrujeria (witchcraft) is as strong as among the Indians, though 

* The Pueblos are, in fact, entitled to all the rights of American 
citizenship, including the ballot, under the solemn pledges our govern- 
ment made to Mexico in the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, more than 
half a century ago ; but they have never been given these rights. 



70 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

their witches are less numerous. It is a remnant of the far 
past. We have still the official records of many trials of 
witches before Spanish courts in this territory, covering a 
couple of centuries. Sometimes a whole bunch of witches 
were tried at once, with all the solemnity of a high Spanish 
tribunal, and those found guilty were duly put to death, just 
as if they had been murderers. 

Of later years the intelligence of the educated Mexicans 
has rendered such trials no longer possible, and no Mexican 
would think now of bringing a witch into court ; but pro- 
ceedings outside the law are not entirely done with. In 
the year 1887, to my knowledge, a poor old Mexican woman 
was beaten to death in a remote town by two men who be- 
lieved they had been bewitched by her ; and no attempt was 
ever made to punish her slayers ! A few months later I had 
the remarkable privilege of photographing three " witches " 
and some of the people they had " bewitched." One Mexi- 
can, of whom I have also a picture, claims that he was per- 
manently crippled by these three poor women, and his right 
leg is sadly twisted — though most of us would see in it more 
of rheumatism than of witchcraft. But you never could make 
Patapalo believe that. He had offended the women, and 
afterward thoughtlessly drank some coffee they proffered; 
and his leg at once grew crooked — what could be plainer 
than that they had bewitched him ? 

A much more intelligent man than the poor town-butch- 
er, Patapalo, tells — and believes — a much more astounding 
story. He incurred the displeasure of a witch in San Mateo, 



THE WITCHES' CORNER. 71 

and is ready to make oath that she turned him into a woman ! 
He had to pay another witch in the distant canon Jnan de 
San Taf oya to turn him back to man again ! He is a person 
of whose sincere belief in this ridiculous statement there can 
be no doubt, and his intelligence in other matters emphasizes 
the depth of his superstitious ignorance in this. I know 
several other Mexicans who claim to have been bewitched in 
the same way ; and the stories of minor misfortunes at the 
hands of the mtches are innumerable. They can be heard 
in any New Mexican hamlet. 

There is one good thing about Mexican witches — they 
never harm the dumb animals. Their sorceries are used only 
against human beings who have aroused their enmity. One 
who enjoys the rather dangerous reputation of being a witch 
is cordially feared and hated, but finds some compensations. 
Few Mexicans are reckless enough to refuse any gift or favor 
the supposed witch may ask. On the other hand, few dare 
eat anything offered by a witch, for in case they have un- 
wittingly offended her they are sure the food or drink will 
cause a live, gnawing animal to grow within them ! A favor- 
ite revenge of the witches is to make strange sores upon the 
face of the offender, which will not be healed until the witch 
is appeased by presents and draws out a stick or string or 
rag — somewhat after the fashion of the Pueblo wizards, of 
whom I will tell you presently. Other persons are made 
bhnd, or deaf, or lame. Indeed, almost any affliction which 
may befall one is very apt to be charged at once by these 
superstition-ridden people to some witch or other. 



72 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

There are many very curious details in the Mexican witch- 
faith. No witch, for instance, can pass a sign of the cross ; 
and a couple of pins or sticks placed in that shape effectually 
bars witches from entering the room or from emerging if the 
holy emblem is between them and the door. The spoken 
name of God or the Virgin Mary breaks a witch's spell at 
once. It is soberly related by many people of my acquaint- 
ance that they employed witches to bear them pick-a-back 
togi*eat distances; but becoming alarmed at the enormous 
height to which the witches flew with them, they cried, " God 
save me ! " or something of the sort, and instantly fell thou- 
sands of feet to the ground, l)ut were not badly hurt ! 

Mexican witches do not fly about on broomsticks, hke 
those in whom our forefathers believed, but in an even more 
remarkable fashion. By day they are plain, commonplace 
people, but at night they take the shapes of dogs, cats, rats, 
or other animals, and sally forth to witch-meetings in the 
mountains, or to prowl about the houses of those they dislike. 
So when the average Mexican sees a strange cat or dog about 
his home at night he feels a horror which seems out of place 
in a man who has proved his courage in bloody Indian wars 
and all the perils of the frontier. 

"When witches wish to fly, they generally retain their hu- 
man form, but assume the legs and eyes of a coyote or other 
animal, leaving their own at home. Then saying (in Spanish, 
of course), " Without God and without the Virgin Mary," they 
rise into the air and sail away. A sad accident once befell a 
male witch named Juan Perea, whom I knew in San Mateo, 



THE WITCHES' CORNER. 73 

but who died a couple of years ago. It was asserted that 
one night he went flying off with the eyes and legs of a cat, 
leaving his own on the kitchen table. His poor starved 
shepherd-dog overturned the table and ate the eyes, and Juan 
had to go through the rest of his life wearing the green eyes 
of a cat ! That the pigmies of Africa should believe such 
things would not be strange ; but what do you think of them 
as articles of faith for American voters ? 

You have all watched the ^'shooting stars" with wonder 
— but with no such feeling as that with which the natives 
here see them ; for here those fiery hails are supposed to be 
witches, flying to theii' nightly meetings ! 

Any one bearing the blessed name of Juan (John) has the 
sole power of catching witches. All he has to do is to draw 
a nine-foot circle on the ground, turn his shirt inside out, and 
call the witch, who must at once fall helpless into this circle ! 
As there are innumerable Juans here, they doubtless would 
have exterminated all the witches long ago, except for the 
unpleasant " fact " that whenever a John exercised this re- 
markable power all the other mtches in the country fell upon 
him and beat him to death ! 

A drunken fellow in Cebolleta, a few years ago, kicked a 
witch. In revenge she caused a live mouse to grow in his 
stomach. The little rodent made its landlord's life miser- 
able for a long time before he could bribe the witch to coax 
it out through his mouth ! 

These are fair samples of unnumbered thousands of stories 
which illustrate the firm faith of my neighbors in witchcraft. 



74 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

It seems fairly childisli to speak of them soberly, and yet they 
are implicitly believed by more citizens of the United States 
than there are in any New England city outside of Boston. 
In this strange corner of our country witchcraft is a concern 
of daily thought and dread, as it was in the older world a 
few centimes ago, when the same superstition splashed all 
Europe with the blood of unfortunate wretches. I have had 
even more intimate concern with witchcraft, both as accused 
and as victim. My photographic and other mysterious work 
has more than once led suspicious Indians to view me as a 
hecMcero; and it is still the common behef among my abo- 
riginal friends that I have been bewitched by some even 
more powerful wizard. 

A stroke of paralysis in 1888 rendered my left arm power- 
less for more than three years and a half. The cause was 
simple enough — the breaking of a tiny blood-vessel in the 
brain. But my Indian friends — and even many Mexicans — 
smiled with a pitying superiority at this explanation. TJieij 
would never swallow such a silly story — they knew well 
enough that I had been bewitched ! Some even suggested 
that I should accuse the witch, and have him or her properly 
dealt with ! My final complete recovery — thanks to a power- 
ful constitution and an out-door Hfe — only confirmed their 
belief. Now they hiew I had paid some other witch to cure 
me ! 



yii. 



THE MAGICIANS. 








jUR civilized "magicians/' 
like Herrmann and his 
predecessors, earn their liveli- 
hood by exhibiting their mar- 
velous dexterity, but with- 
out any claim to superhuman 
powers. They aA^owedly rely 
only upon their hands, edu- 
cated to surpassing cleverness 
by tedious years of practice, 
and upon various ingenious machines and accessories. Per- 
haps this frankness, however, is partly due to the fact that 
any supernatural pretense would be laughed at by their in- 
telHgent auditors; and if we were all prepared to accept 
them as real magicians, I am not at all sure that they would 
not willingly pose as such. 

With the aboriginal wizard there is no such stimulus to 
frankness. If his audiences have eyes incomparably less 
easy to be befooled than ours, their intellectual vision is less 
acute. To outdo even those matchlessly observant eyes, he 



76 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

has only to be matchlessly adroit j and when the eyes are 
once over-matched, his auditors are ready to accept any ex- 
planation he may choose to give. He therefore claims super- 
natural powers, given to him by Those Above; and my 
studies convince me that he himself believes this as fully as 
do any of his people — so easy is it for us all, in time, to im- 
pose upon ourselves even more than upon others. 

Superstition is the corner-stone of all the strange aborigi- 
nal religions. Everything which the Indian does not abso> 
lutely understand he attributes to a supernatural cause — 
and to a personified one. The rainbow is a bow of the gods ; 
the lightning, their arrows ; the thunder, their drum ; the 
sun, their shield. The very animals are invested with super- 
natural attributes, according to their power to injure man or 
to do him good. In such a system as this a man who can 
do or appear to do what others cannot is naturally regarded 
as having superhuman gifts — in short, he is a wizard. The 
chief influence and authority with all aboriginal tribes he in 
their medicine-men, and these are always magicians. They 
have gained their ascendancy by their power to do wonder- 
ful and inexplicable things; and this ascendancy is main- 
tained in the hands of a small, secret class, which never dies 
out, since it is constantly recruited by the adoption of boys 
into the order, to which their lives are thenceforth absolutely 
devoted. The life of a medicine-man is a fearfully hard one. 
The manual practice alone which is necessary to acquire that 
marvelous legerdemain is almost the task of a lifetime ; and 
there are countless enormous fasts and other self-denials, 



THE MAGICIANS. 77 

which are so rigorous that these magicians seldom attain to 
the great age which is common among their people. With 
the Indian magicians as with onrs^ conjuring is the means of 
livelihood, but in a different and indirect way. They neither 
charge an admittance-fee nor take up a collection, but receive 
less direct returns from the faith of their fellow-aborigines 
that they are " precious to The Trues/' and that their favor 
should be cultivated by presents. The jugglers of India, of 
whom we read so much, will exliibit their marvelous tricks to 
any one for a consideration; but no money in the world 
would tempt one of our Indian jugglers to admit a stranger 
to the place where he was performing his wonders. To him, 
as to his people, it is a matter not of money but of religion. 
The aboriginal magicians with whom I am best acquainted 
are the medicine-men of the Navajo and Pueblo Indians of 
New Mexico, and astounding performers they are. It is 
impossible to say which are the more dextrous, though the 
Navajos have one trick which I have never seen equaled by 
the world's most famous prestidigitators. If these stern 
bronze conjurers had the civilized notion of making money 
by exhibiting themselves, they could amass fortunes. They 
have none of the cabinets, mirrors, false-bottomed cases, or 
other appliances of our stage-wizards; and they lack the 
greatest aid of the latter — the convenient sleeves and pock- 
ets. Their tricks are done in a bare room, with a hard clay 
floor under which are no springs or wires, with no accesso- 
ries whatever. 
. The principal occasions of Pueblo and Navajo magic are 



78 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

at the medicine-makings, when the people gather to see the 
shamans (medicine-men) heal sickness, foretell the year, or 
give thanks to The Trues for its prosperity, and perform 
other rites belonging to such ceremonials. These medicine- 
makings among the Pueblos are held in one of the medicine- 
houses — a great room sacred to the shamans and never to 
be profaned by any other use. There is one just behind the 
Indian house in which I live. The Navajos hold them in the 
inedicme-Jioganda — a large conical hut, equally devoted to 
this sole purpose. 

After the prehminary prayers to Those Above, the disper- 
sion of evil spii'its, and other extremely curious and inter- 
esting ceremonies which I have no space to describe here, 
the business of the medicine-dance is to cure those who are 
sick or af&icted — that is, according to the Indian idea, be- 
witched. There is no giving of remedies, as we understand 
the phrase — aU is magic. The "medicine" {waJir, in the 
language of this pueblo) is rather mental and moral than 
physical; and the doses are from nimble fingers and not 
from vials. An American " medicine-man " woidd open his 
eyes very wide if he could see how these swarthy doctors put 
up a prescription. 

The shamans dance during the whole of their professional 
duties, and most of the time have in each hand a long 
feather from the wing of an eagle. Earher in the perform- 
ance these feathers have been used to toss up evil spirits so 
that the wind may bear them away ; but now they serve as 
lancets, probes, and in fact the whole surgical-case and medi- 



THE MAGICIANS. 79 

cine-cliest. A shaman xiances up to a sick person in the au- 
dience, puts the tip of the feather against the patient, and 
with the quill in his mouth sucks diligently for a moment. 
The feather seems to swell to a great size, as though some 
large object were passing through it. Then it resumes its 
natural size, the shaman begins to cough and choke, and 
directly with his hand draws from his mouth a large rag, or 
a big stone, or a foot-long branch of the myriad-bristling 
buckhorn-cactus — while the patient feels vastly relieved at 
having such an unpleasant lodger removed from his cheek or 
neck or eye ! No w^onder he had felt sick ! Sometimes the 
magician does not use the feather at all, but with his bare 
hand plucks from the body of the sick man the remarkable 
" disease," w^hich is waved aloft in triumph and then passed 
around to the audience for critical inspection. In the whole 
performance, it must be remembered, the wizards have not 
even the advantage of distance, but are close enough to touch 
the audience. 

Common to these same medicine-dances is the startling 
illusion of the witch-kiUing. In the bowl of sacred water 
which stands before him, the chief shaman is supposed to see 
as in a mirror everything that is happening in the whole 
world, and even far into the future. At times, as he bends 
to blow a delicate wreath of smoke from the sacred cigarette 
across the magic muTor, he cries out that he sees witches in 
a certain spot doing iU to some Indian. The Cum-pali-huit- 
lah-wen (medicine-guards) rush out of the room with their 
bows and arrows — which are the insignia of then' office, 



80 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

without which they must never appear — to get the Tvitches. 
In a short time they return, bringing their victims by the 
long hair. These "dead witches" are in face, dress, and 
everything else exactly like Indians, except that they are no 
larger than a three-year-old child. Each has the feathers of 
an arrow projecting under the left arm, while the agate or 
volcanic glass tip shows under the right. Of course they are 
manikins of some sort; but the deception is sickeningly 
perfect. The guards swing them up to the very faces of the 
audience to be looked at 5 and sometimes drops of apparent 
blood spatter upon the awed spectators. 

Another remarkable feat of these jugglers is to build upon 
the bare floor a hot fire of cedar- wood, so close as almost to 
roast the foremost of the audience. Then the dusky magi- 
cians, still keeping up their weird chant — which must never 
be stopped during the services — dance bare-footed and bare- 
legged in and upon the fire, hold their naked arms in the 
flames, and eat hving coals with smacking lips and the utmost 
seeming gusto. There can be no optical illusion about this 
— it is as plain as dayhght. Of course there must have been 
some preparation for the fiery ordeal, but what it is no one 
knows save the initiated, and it is certainly made many hours 
beforehand, for the performers have been in plain sight for a 
very long time. 

Another equally startling trick is performed when the 
room has been darkened by extinguishing the countless 
candles which gave abundant light on the other ceremonies. 
The awed audience sit awhile in the s^loom in hushed ex- 




•:::-^^ :i#' 



THE MAGICIANS. 83 

pectancy. Then tliey hear the low growl of distant thunder, 
which keeps rolling- nearer and nearer. Suddenly a l:>linding 
flash of forked lightning shoots across the room from side to 
side, and another and another, while the room trembles to 
the roar of the thunder, and the flashes show terrified women 
clinging to their husbands and brothers. Outside the sky 
may be twinkling with a million stars, but in that dark room 
a fearful storm seems to be raging. If one of these abo- 
riginal Jupiters would condescend to superintend the hght- 
nings for our theaters, we should have much more realistic 
stage-storms than we do. These artificial storms last but a 
few moments, and when they are over the room is lighted 
up again for the other ceremonies. How these effects are 
produced I am utterly unable to explain, but they are start- 
lingly real. 

The characteristic feature of one of the medicine-dances of 
the Beer-ahn here in Isleta is the swallowing of eighteen-inch 
swords to the very hilt, by the naked (except for the tiny 
breech-clout) performers. These swords are double-edged, 
sharp-pointed, and, as nearly as I can tell, about two inches 
wide. So far as I know, no other of the numerous classes of 
medicine-men here perform this feat. 

In the great Navajo medicine-dance of Dsil-yid-je Quacal, 
one of the most important ceremonies of the nine-days' 
" dance " is the swallowing of the " great plumed arrows " by 
the almost naked conjurers in similar fashion. After they 
have been withdrawn from the mouths of the magicians, the 
magical arrows (which have the ancient stone heads) are ap- 



84 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

plied to the patient, being pressed to the soles of his feet, to 
his knees, hands, stomach, back, shoulders, crown of head, 
and mouth. 

In this same remarkable and almost endless Navajo cere- 
monial, some of the magicians (generally in a band of ten or 
a dozen) perform the startling fire-dance. The conjurers are 
clad only in the breech-clout, and each carries in his hands a 
long bundle of shredded cedar-bark. The dance is performed 
around an enormous fire in a corral known as the Dark- 
Circle-of -Branches. Each hghts his bark flambeau, and then 
they run at top speed around and around the bonfii*e. They 
hold theu' torches against their own nude bodies, then 
against those of their companions, often for two or three 
minutes at a time ; they whip each other with these bm-ning 
scourges, and rub each other down with them, taking and 
giving veritable baths of fli*e as they run madly around the 
circle, the flames streaming behind them in fiery banners. 
Dr. Washington Matthews, the foremost student of Navajo 
customs, has said ofiicially : ''I have seen man}^ fire scenes 
on the stage, many acts of fire-eating and fii*e-handling by 
civilized jugglers, but nothing quite comparable to this.'' 

Another Navajo jugglery is to stand a feather on end in 
a flaring, pan-shaped basket, and dance with it as a partner. 
The Indian — in this case sometimes the dancer is a very 
young boy — dances in proper fashion around the basket; 
and the feather dances too, hopping gently up and down, and 
swaying in the dii'ection of its human partner. If he dances 
to the north, the feather leans northward j if he moves to the 



THE MAGICIANS. 85 

south, the feather tips southward, and so on, as if the quill 
were actually reaching out to him ! 

There is also " magic '^ in the foretelling of the year, which 
is done by the chief shaman and his two first-assistants. 
This medicine-dance is always by or before the middle of 
March, many weeks before a green blade of any sort is to be 
found in this climate. These three officials go out from the 
meeting to the banks of the Rio Grande, and presently return 
with stalks of gTcen corn and wheat — which they declare 
was brought to them by the river direct from The Trues. 
These stalks are handed about among the audience, and then 
the chief shaman draws from them the omens for the crops 
of the coming season. 

The last service of the medicine-dance before the benedic- 
tion-song is the " seed-giving,'' which is itself a sleight-of-hand 
trick. The chief fetich of the shamans is "the Mother" — 
an ear of spotless white corn with a plume of dowTiy white 
feathers bound to the head. It represents the mother of all 
mankind, and during the whole medicine-dance one of these 
queer objects has been sitting in front of each medicine-man. 
Now, as all in the audience rise, the chief shaman and his as- 
sistants shake their " Mothers " above the heads of the throng 
in token of blessing ; and out pours a perfect shower of ker- 
nels of corn, wheat, and seeds of all kinds, in a vastly greater 
quantity than I would undertake to hide in ten times as 
many of those little tufts. 

The most remarkable of the feats of the Pueblo magicians 
is one of which I cannot write in detail, for I have never 



86 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

seen it j but that the trick is performed, and so well done as to 
deceive the sharpest-eyed of the spectators, is a fact beyond 
doubt. The shamans are said at some special occasions to 
tiu'n themselves at will into any animal shape ; and where a 
moment before had stood a painted Indian the audience sees 
a wolf, or bear, or dog, or some other brute ! This is in a 
Hue with some of the most famous juggleries of India, and 
is quite as wonderful a deception as any of them. 

These are by no means the only tricks in the repertory of 
the Pueblo conjurers, but they are sufficient to illustrate the 
marvelous dexterity and adroitness of these swarthy won-, 
der-workers, who produce such surprising results mth none 
of the paraphernalia of more civilized jugglers, and whose 
magic has such a deep interest beyond its mere bewilderment 
of the eye. It is one of the potent factors in a religion so 
astonishing and so vastly complicated that whole volumes 
would hardly exhaust the interest of the subject. 

The Navajo magicians practise all these tricks and numer- 
ous others. One of their manifestations which I have never 
found among the Pueblos is the " moving of the sun." This 
takes place in the medicine-lodge at night — the time of all 
official acts of the medicine-men. At the appointed time a 
sun rises on the east (inside the room) and slowly describes 
an arched course until at last it sets in the west side of the 
room, and darkness reigns again. During the whole per- 
formance a sacred chant is kept up, and once started dare not 
be interrupted until the sun has finished its course. 

But the crowning achievement of the Navajo — and, in my 



THE MAGICIANS. 89 

knowledge, of any Indian — magicians is the growing of the 
sacred corn. At sunrise the shaman plants the enchanted 
kernel before him, in full view of his audience, and sits sol- 
emnly in his place singing a weird song. Presently the earth 
cracks, and the tender gTcen shoot pushes forth. As the 
magician sings on the young plant grows visibly, reaching 
upward several inches an hour, waxing thick and putting out 
its di'ooping blades. If the juggler stops his song the growth 
of the corn stops, and is resumed only when he recommences 
his chant. By noon the corn is taU and vigorous and already 
tasseled-out ; and by sunset it is a mature and perfect plant, 
with its tall stalk, sedgy leaves, and silk-topped ears of com ! 
How the trick is performed I have never been able to form 
so much as a satisfactory guess ; but done it is, as plainly as 
eyes ever saw anything done, and apparently with as little 
chance for deception. 



yiii. 



THE SELF-CRUCIFIERS. 




jROM the witches, and within the same strange 
corner of our country where they still floiu-ish, 
it is an easy step to a much more wonderful 
fanaticism, to the most wonderful, perhaps, in 
the limits of the civilized world. It is a relic 
of a barbarism so incredible that one can hardly blame those 
who could not believe it possible. I should have been as 
skeptical myself, though thousands of Americans have seen 
it, if I had not myself viewed the astounding sight. And 
in corroboration of my eyes there are beside me a score of 
photographs, which very nearly cost me my life in the 
taking, and several times since. 

You may have learned that in the Middle Ages nearly the 
whole of Europe had a strange epidemic — a fever of peni- 
tential self- whipping. The Flagellants, as they were called, 
paraded the streets lashing themselves with scourges, or used 
the whip at home. Even kings caught the infection, and 
abused their own royal l^acks. It took centuries to eradi- 
cate this remarkable custom. There is nothing left of it in 
Europe now ; and one who wishes to see so strange a sight 



THE SELF-CRUCIFIERS. 91 

must go not abroad but to a neglected corner of oiu' own 
land. 

When I read in boyhood of the awful self-tortures of the 
Fakeers of India, I little dreamed that I should come to live 
among a class of men who fully parallel their worst self- 
cruelties, and men who are citizens of the United States, with 
votes as good as mine. 

The Penitentes or Penitent Brothers were once very nu- 
merous in New Mexico, but have been quietly stamped out 
by the Chiu*ch until but few active bands remain, and they 
only in the most out-of-the-way hamlets. They are Mexicans, 
and of course very ignorant and fanatic ones. Their strange 
brotherhood — a remnant and perversion of the penitent 
orders of the Middle Ages — is active only forty days in the 
year, the forty days of Lent. At that time they flog their 
own naked backs with cruel scourges of aloe-fiber, carry 
enormous crosses, lie on beds of cactus, and perform simi- 
lar seK-tortures, making pilgrimages thus. On Good Friday 
they redouble their ghastly efforts, and finally crucify, upon 
a real cross, one of their number who is chosen by lot. He 
does not always die under this awful torture, but when he 
does, nothing is done to his fanatical brethren. 

I shall never forget my first encounter with the Peni- 
tentes at San Mateo, N. M., in 1888, and there are very good 
reasons why I should not. Among them is a ball in my 
throat. If the discovery that I was living among witches 
had startled and aroused me, you may imagine my feelings 
when, some months later, I learned that a living man was to 



92 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

be crucified in town in a few days. This was learning some- 
thing about my own country with a vengeance. The first 
hint came one belated night as I returned from hunting in 
the mountains. Suddenly there rose upon the air the most 
awful sound I ever heard. The hideous scream of the moun- 
tain-lion, the deadly war-whoop, are tame beside it. You may 
laugh at me for being scared at the simple whistle of a reed, 
but if ever you hear that unearthly ululation you will shiver 
too. Words cannot describe its piercing, wild, uncanny shrill. 
The official pitero afterward taught me that simple au*, and 
it sounds very flat indeed when whistled ) but blo\\ai from 
his shrieking reed, filling the aii* for miles so that one cannot 
tell whether it comes from above, below, or either hand, it is 
as ill a sound as you wiU ever wish to hear. 

When I got home to my courtly Spanish friends and asked 
the meaning of that unearthly foo-ootle-tee-oo they told me 
about the Penitentes. It was Monday of Holy Week, and 
they were making theii* nightly pilgrimages j on Thursday 
and Friday I could see them. What, in daylight I Oh, yes. 
HuiTah ! Then I will photograph them ! Por dios amigo, but 
they will kill you if you think of such a f oolliardy thing ! 
But who ever knew an enthusiast to be a coward in the line 
of his hobby ? If I had been certain of being killed the next 
moment, it is not sure that I should not have tried to get 
the photographs fii'st, so wrought up was I. And make the 
photographs I did, twenty-five of them, with my one useful 
hand quaking on the bulb of the Prosch shutter and now and 
then snapping an instantaneous picture at the marvelous sight, 



THE SELF-CRUCIFIERS. 93 

mtli a cocked six-shooter lying on the top of the camera-box, 
and lion-Hke Don Ireneo and a stalwart peon with revolvers 
in hand facing back the mnrderous mob. Perhaps the pic- 
tures were not worth the risk of that day and of the many 
subsequent months when repeated attempts were made to as- 
sassinate me ; but they are the only photographs that were 
ever made of that strangest of the strange corners of our 
country^ and I have never grudged the price. I afterward 
got photographs of several of the chief Penitentes; and 
have in my cabinet some of their blood-stained scourges, 
prociu-ed at equal risk. 

That was in 1888. The same year there were, to my know- 
ledge, crucifixions in two other New Mexican towns, and 
whipping and the other rites in twenty-three. In 1889, 1890, 
and 1891 there were again crucifixions in San Mateo and 
one other town that I know of, and there may have been 
more. Until within four years there were also women-Peni- 
tentes, but so far as I can learn they are no longer active. 
They used to wind all their limbs with wire or ropes so 
tightly as to stop the circidation, bear crosses, and march for 
miles with unstockinged feet in shoes half filled with sharp 
pebbles. 

And these are your fellow-citizens and mine ! What do 
you think about going to Africa to find barbarous customs, 
or to Oberammergau for a Passion-play '? 



IX. 



HOMES THAT WERE FORTS. 




N Indian who dwells in a house at aU seems an 
anomaly to most of its, who know none too 
much of our own country. We picture him 
always as a nomad, living in his wigw^am or 
tepee of bark or hide for a few days at a time, 
and then moving his ^^town" elsewhere. The astounded 
look of the average traveler when he learns that we have 
Indians who build and inhabit permanent and good dwell- 
ings of many stories in height is never to be forgotten. 

-There are some tribes of recently civilized aborigines in 
the Indian Territory who have learned to dwell in fairly good 
farm-houses within a generation, and other remnants of tribes 
elsewhere ; but tliese all learned the habit from us, and re- 
cently. There is but one Indian tribe in North America above 
Mexico which has always lived in permanent houses since 
history began, and that is one of our very largest tribes, the 
Pueblos. When Columbus was yet trying to beat a New 
World into the thick skull of the Old, these simple, unlettered 
"village Indians" were already living in their strange but 
comfortable and lof tv tenements, and no man knows for how 



HOMES THAT WERE FORTS. 95 

long before. And in very similar houses they dwell to-day, 
and in very much the same style as before the first European 
eyes ever saw America. It took a great many generations for 
our forefathers to attain to any buildings of more than fifty 
rooms and three stories in this New World; but unknown 
centuries before the landing of the Pilgrims — or even of the 
Spaniards, who were more than a hundred years ahead of them 
— the ignorant Indians of the southwest built and occupied 
huge houses from four to six stories in height, and with some- 
times half a thousand rooms.* The influence of civilization 
has largely affected Pueblo architectirre ; and most of the 
Indiaji towns along the Rio Grande nowadays have but one- 
and two-storied structures^more after the Spanish style. But 
there are hundreds of ruins of these enormous "' community- 
houses" scattered over the two territories of Ai'izona and 
New Mexico, and some in Colorado and Utah, and some stiU 
occupied towns of the same sort The most striking example 
among living towns is the pueblo of Taos,t in the extreme 
northern part of New Mexico. That wonderfully picturesque 
town, looking at which the traveler finds it hard to realize 
that he is still in America, has but two houses ; but they are 
five and six stories high, and contain about three hundred 
rooms apiece. The pueblo of Acoma, in a western county, 
has six houses, each three stories taU. , and Zuni, still farther 

* Pecos liad two houses of five hundred and seventeen and five hun- 
dred and eighty-five rooms respectively. 

f Reached by a twenty-five-mile-wagon-ride from Embudo, on the 
Denver and Rio Grande Railway. 



HOMES THAT WERE FORTS. 97 

west, has a six-story community-liouse covering many acres 
and containing many hundred rooms. The Moqni towns are 
three-storied. As for ruins of such buildings, they are every- 
where. Some years ago I found in a remote and dangerous 
corner of the Navajo country such a ruin — the t^^e of a 
thousand others — in which the five-story community-house 
formed an entire rectangle, inclosing a public square in the 
middle. The outer walls of these houses never had doors or 
windows, so they presented to any marauding foe a blank 
wall of great height. On one side of this ruin is its most 
uncommon feature — a great tower, mth part of the fifth story 
still standing, and still showing the loopholes by which the 
beleaguered Pueblos showered agate-tipped arrows upon their 
besiegers. This pueblo was a deserted and forgotten ruin 
when the first Spaniards entered this territory, three hundred 
and fifty years ago. 

All these great houses were of stone masonry very well 
laid. The builders had no metal of any sort, and therefore 
could not dress stone, as many superficial observers have 
supposed they did, but selected sandstones and hmestones 
which broke naturally into rather regular shape, and laid 
these in mud mortar with remarkable skill. Down the un- 
crumbled masonry of those prehistoric walls one can slide 
the point of a spade as down a dressed plank. 

The architecture of the Pueblos is unique and character- 
istic, and their original houses look unlike anything else in 
the world. They are all terraced^ so that the front of a 
building looks like a gigantic flight of steps. The second 
7 



98 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

story stands well back on the roof of tlie first, whicli thus 
gives it a sort of broad, uncovered porch its whole length. 
The third story is similarly placed upon the second, and so 
on up. There are no stairs inside even the largest of these 
buildings, except sometimes ladders to go down into the first 
story when that is built in the old fashion without doors. 
In Acoma, which has about seven hundred people, there 
were, when I fii'st knew it, but six doors on the ground, and 
there are but few more now. To get into the first story of 
any of the hundi'eds of other tenements, one must go up a 
ladder to the first roof, enter the second-story room, lift a 
wee trap-door in its floor, and back down another ladder to 
the first-floor room. All the " stairs " are outside the house, 
and can be moved from place to place — a plan which has 
its advantages as well as its drawbacks — for they are all 
simply tall, clumsy ladders. 

All these architectural peculiarities were for purposes of 
defense. The lower story was a dead wall, into which no 
enemy with only aboriginal weapons could break, and some 
of these walls have laughed at civilized field-pieces. The lad- 
ders could easily be drawn up, and the level roofs made an 
excellent position from which to rain stones and arrows upon 
a foe. Even if the enemy captured the first roof, the people 
had only to retire to the second, from which they could fight 
down with undiminished advantage. From these terraces 
the inhabitants could hold their own against a far superior 
force. Besides, the tenements were generally built around a 
square, so that their sheer back walls presented a cliff-like and 




AN ANCIENT CLIFF-DWELLING. 



iOO SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

unbroken obstacle Avliicli no savage foe could scale, while 
their fronts faced upon the safe inner inclosure. At Pecos 
(now deserted), which was the largest pueblo in the southwest, 
and at many smaller towns, an Indian could step from his 
door and walk around the whole town on any one of the tiers 
of roofs. Sometimes these community-houses were terraced 
on both sides ; and the two at Taos are like huge pjrramids, 
terraced on all four sides. 

These fine stone walls were generally plastered inside and 
out mth adobe clay, which made them very smooth and neat, 
particularly when brilliantly whitew^ashed, according to the 
Pueblo custom, with gypsum. The rafters are the straight 
trunks of tapering pines stripped of their bark, and above 
these is a roof of cross-sticks, straw, and clay, wliich is 
perfectly water-tight. The windows are all small — another 
relic of the old days of danger — and in the more primitive 
houses the windows are only translucent sheets of gypsum. 
Nearly every room has its queer southwestern fii'eplace, in 
which the sticks are bui'ned on end. Those for heating alone 
are very tiny, and stand m a corner ; but the cooking fire- 
places often fill one side of a room, and under one of their 
capacious "hoods" nearl}^ a dozen people could sit. 

As you may imagine from what has been said of their 
houses, the Pueblos are very peculiar and interesting Indians 
They live very neatly and comfortably, and their homes are 
generally as clean as wax. They are peaceable and indus- 
trious, good hunters and brave warriors when need be, but 
quiet farmers by profession, as they were when the outside 



HOMES THAT WERE FORTS. 103 

world fii'st found them. The^^ have always elected their own 
officials, and they obey the laws both of their own strange 
government and of the United States in a way which they 
certainly did not learn from us, for there is no American 
community nearly so law-abiding. They are entu-ely self- 
supporting, and receive nothing from our government. They 
are not poor nor lazy, and they do not impose servile tasks 
upon their wives. One of my Pueblo neighbors in Isleta lent 
the hard cash to pay off our troops in New Mexico during 
the civil war ! 

Quite as interesting and remarkable as the best types of 
present Pueblo communal houses are the ruins of their 
still more ancient homes. It was long supposed that the 
so-called " Cliff -builders " and ^' Cave-dwellers " were of an 
extinct race ; and much more of silly and ignorant surmise 
than of common-sense truth has been written about them. 
But as soon as there was any really scientific investigation 
of the southwest, like Bandelier's wonderful researches, the 
fact was fully and finally established that the builders of 
these great ruins were nothing in the world but Pueblo 
Indians. They have not " vanished," but simply moved, for 
a variety of reasons; and their descendants are living to 
this day in later pueblos. Indeed, we now know the history 
of many of these ruins ; and the Indians themselves, that of 
aU or nearly all. 

The Pueblos used always to build in places which Nature 
herself had made secure, and generally upon the top of mesas, 
or " islands " of rock. Those who settled among the peculiar 



104 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

terraced canons wliich abound in some parts of the south- 
west usually built their towns upon the shelves of the cliff j 
while those whose region furnished precipices of easily carved 
stone hollowed out caves therein for their dwellings. It all 
depended on the locahty and the surroundings. 

A canon of the '' Chff-builders" is a wonderfully pictu- 
resque and interesting place. The stratification was a great 
help to the builders of these strange chasm-towns, and doubt- 
less fii'st suggested to them the idea of putting theii' houses 
there. The cliffs are many times as far apart, in such a 
canon, at their tops as at the bottom, and a cross-section of 
the canon would look something like this : 




Sometimes there is a perennial stream at the bottom, but 
oftener, in this arid region, the dry season leaves only a chain 
of pools, which were, however, adequate for the water-supply 
of these communities. The several lower shelves of the 
gorge were never built upon, and the water was all carried 
several hundred feet up the cliff in earthen jars or tight- 
woven baskets on the heads of the industrious housewives. 
Such inconvenience of the water- works has never deterred 
the Pueblos, and it is a striking commentary upon the sav- 
age dangers of their old life to see at what a fearful expense 



HOMES THAT WERE FORTS. 



105 



of toil they brought water 
any distance to a place that 
was safe. At Acoma to this 
day every drop of diinking- 
water is brought in jars half 
a mile over an enormously 
difficult cliff trail, and in 
some of the old-time pueblos 
the daUy water-journey was 
even worse. They never 
brought water thus and 
filled tanks inside the town, 
as some have fancied, but 
stored it only in their earth- 
en tinajas. 

But safety was before 
water, and so the swarthy 
people built their homes far 
up the side of the cliff, and 
there was a great saving of 
labor in another way. As 
a rule the alternate strata in 
those canons are of differ- 
ent kinds of rock, and une- 
qually eroded. Between each 
pair of harder strata the 
softer intermediate one had 
been so gnawed out by wind 




idmUii#. M 



HOMES THAT WERE FORTS. 107 

and water that its ueiglibors above and below projected 
many feet beyond it, the lower one always farthest 5 so there 
the '' Cliff -builder '' found that natui'e had made ready to his 
hand three of the six sides of every room. The smooth, solid 
rock of the shelf was his floor, and a narrow but endless 
porch outside as well. The overhanging rock of the ledge 
above was his roof — frequently a very low one, but certainly 
water-tight — and the face of the intermediate stratum was 
his back wall. He had only to build three httle stone walls 
from stone floor to stone roof — a front wall and two end 
walls — and there was his house. 

These cliff-rooms were extremely small, varpng according 
to the strata, but seldom more than a dozen feet long, eight 
or ten feet deep, and five to eight feet high. In many of 
them no ordinary person could stand erect. There were sel- 
dom any windows; and the doors, which served also as 
chimneys, were very low and but twelve to eighteen inches 
wide. An enemy at the very door would be so crouched and 
cramped in entering, that those within could take him at a 
disadvantage. 

Think of a town whose sidewalks were three or four feet 
wide, and more than that number of hundred feet apart, 
and between them a stupendous gutter five hundred feet 
deep ! Think of those fat, dimpled, naked brown babies, 
whose three-foot play-ground had no fence against a tumble 
of half a thousand feet ! 

There are several of these canons of the '' Cliff -builders " 
easily accessible from the A. & P. R. R. at Flagstaff, Arizona. 



108 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

They are gigantic gashes in the level uplands ; one comes to 
their very brink without the remotest suspicion that such an 
abyss is in front. One of these canons is over twenty miles 
long, and in places six hundi-ed feet deep. It contains the 
ruins of about a thousand of these small cliff -houses, some of 
which are very well preserved. These are the easiest to reach 
of any of this class of ruins, being less than ten miles from 
the raih'oad station and hotels. There are hundreds of other 
canons in Ai'izona, New Mexico, and the lower corners of 
Colorado and Utah presenting the same sort of cliff -houses 5 
but. most of them are in the wilderness, at great distances 
from the railroad or any other convenience of civilization. 

In most of these houses there is little to be found. Furni- 
ture they never had, and most of the implements have been 
carried away by the removing inhabitants or by subsequent 
roving Indians. The floors are one and two feet deep with the 
dust of ages, mingled with nut-shells and thorns brought in 
by the rock-squirrels which are now the only tenants. Dig- 
ging is made painful by a thousand thorn-stabs and by sti- 
fling clouds of that flour-like dust ; but it is often rewarded. 
All about are strewn broken bits of prehistoric pottery, and 
the veriest mummies of corn-cobs, shrunken by centuries of 
that dry air to the size of a finger and hardened almost to 
flint. There are also occasional squash-stems, as wizened and 
as indurated. By digging to the bed-rock floor I have found 
fine stone axes, beautiful agate arrow-points, the puzzhng 
discoidal stones, and even baskets of yucca fiber exactly like 
the strange " plaques '^ made in Moqui to-day. The baskets 



HOMES THAT WERE FORTS. Ill 

crumbled to dust soon after they were exposed to the air. 
There are few other countries so dry that a basket of slender 
vegetable threads would hold its patterns for four hundred 
years or more under a foot of soil. 

Between the small cliff-houses abeady described and the 
cave-dwellings there is a very curious link — houses, or even 
whole towns, built in a natural cave. " Montezuma's Castle " 
is such a one, and there are many, many others, of which 
probably the best-known — tha,nks to Jackson's expedition — 
are the fine ruins on the Mancos. Most of the important 
ruins of the Canon de Tsay-ee and its tributaries. Canon 
del Muerto and Monumental Canon, are also of this class. 
These caves are not, like the Mammoth Cave, great subter- 
ranean passages, but great hollows, generally like a huge 
bowl set up on edge in the face of the cliff. They absolutely 
protect the inclosed town (which is frequently one building 
of enormous size) above, on both sides, and generally also 
below. They are usually high up from the bottom of the 
cliff, and between them and the foot is a precipitous ascent 
which no enemy could scale if any resistance whatever were 
made. Such towns could be captured only by surprise, 
as we know that in very rare cases some were captured. 
Some observant but uninformed travelers have been sadly 
misled by the regular, round cavities which are found in the 
ground near these lofty pueblos, and have taken them for 
water-tanks. Such a notion could arise only from entire 
ignorance both of the history and the ethnology of the south- 
west. These circular cavities are the remains of the estufas, 







f .1 







THE CUEVA FINTADA, OR "PAINTED CAVE. 



HOMES THAT WERE FORTS. 113 

or sacred rooms of the men, which were generally made un- 
derground. The roofs have long ago disappeared, and only 
these pits are left. They never had an^i-hing more to do 
with water than the fireplaces hadj the Pueblo reservoirs 
were something entirely different. 

These huge houses were generally far from regular, for 
the simple reason that there never was a ^^ master-architect " 
to control the structure. Every family built its part of the 
tenement to suit itseK. There could be no '^ bossing " in such 
things, for Indians are essentially tribal, and under that or- 
ganization anything like a feudal authority is an absolute 
impossibility. Still, the builders agreed fairly weU as to the 
general plan, and the great structure was sometimes very 
s\Tnmetrical. 

The romantic Cueva Pintada,* which not a dozen white 
men have ever seen, is a very good type of these caves on a 
smaller scale, being only some fifty feet in diameter. It looks 
very much like the bowl of a gigantic ladle set into the 
cliff fifty feet above its foot. It contains several cave-dwell- 
ings, but no houses of masonry, though these occur at other 
points of the cliff. 

To me the real cave-dweUings are the most interesting of 
all these strange sorts of prehistoric ruins. They are prob- 
ably no older than the cliff -built houses ; as I have said, those 
differences were not of time, or development, or tribe, but 
merely of localit}^, but they seem so much farther from us. 

* "Painted Cave," so called from the strange pietographs in red 
oclier which adorn its concave walls. 

8 



114 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

To see them carries one l)aek to the tunes when our own 
ancestors and all mankind dwelt in caves and wore only the 
skins of wild beasts j those far, dim days when there was not 
even iron, nor any other metal, and when fire itself was new, 
and the savage stomach was all the conscience and all the 
brains that man knew he had. 

The most extensive and wonderful cave-communities in 
the world are in the great Cochiti upland, some fifty miles 
northwest of Santa Fe. The journey is a very laborious one, 
but by no means dangerous 5 and if you can get my good 
Indian compadre^ Jose Hilario Montoya, now governor of 
the pueblo of Cochiti, to guide you, you are apt to remember 
it as the most interesting expedition of your life. Tlie coun- 
try itself is Avell worth a long journey to see, for it is one 
of the wildest in North America. Tlie enormous plateau is 
split with canons from the mountains to the deep-worn river ; 
and the mesas which separate them are long triangles which 
break off in thousand-foot cliffs in the chasm of the Rio 
Grande, their narrow points looking like stupendous col- 
umns, whence they get their Spanish name j^oZ/Tros. The 
whole area is like the foot of some unspeakable giant with 
dozens of toes, set down beside the hoarse, gray river. 

The whole region for thousands of square miles — like the 
majority, indeed, of New Mexico — is volcanic. But here we 
see less of the vast lava-flows so common in other parts of 
the territory. Instead, there is an unprecedented deposit of 
further-consumed matter from the forgotten fire-mountains. 

* Chum. 




1*^ J* ^ , - ^C^vVStt 



MUMMY CAVE AND VILLAGb:, CANON DEL ML'ERTO, ARIZONA, 



HOMES THAT WERE FORTS. 117 

Wlien I was a boy in New England, I thought the ^^ floating 
stone^' with which I scrubbed my dingy fists was a great 
curiosity ; but in the gorges of the Cochiti upland are cliffs 
one thousand five hundred feet high, and miles long, of solid 
pumice. There is enough ^' stone that will float" to take the 
stains from all the boy hands in the world for all time. 

In this noble and awesome wilderness several tribes of 
Pueblo Indians dwelt in prehistoric times. It probably did 
not take them long to learn that in such a country of soft 
chff it was rather easier to dig one's house than to build it, 
even when the carpenter had no better tools than a sharp 
splinter of volcanic glass. The volcanoes did some good, 
you see, in this land which they burned dry forever ; for in 
the same cliff they put the soft stone from which any one 
could cut a house, and nuggets of the extremely hard glass 
which the same eruption had made, wherefrom to chip the 
prehistoric "knife." 

In the superbly picturesque canon of the Bito de los 
Frigoles* is the largest of all villages of caves, deserted 
for more than four hundred years. Outside its unnumbered 
cave-rooms were more rooms yet, of masonry of " bricks " cut 
from the same cliff. 

A few miles farther up the Rio Grande, not down in a canon 
but on the top of the great plateau nearly two thousand feet 
above the river, are two huge castle-like buttes of chalky tufa, 
each some two hundred feet high. They stand one on each 
side of the dividing gulf of the Santa Clara canon, and are 
* "Brook of the beans." 



118 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

known to the Indians respectively as the Pu-ye and the Shii- 
fin-ne. They are the most easily accessible of the large cave- 
villages of North America, being not over ten miles from 
the little railroad town of Espanola, on the Rio Grande some 
thirty miles by rail from Santa Fe. Going up the lovely 
Santa Clara canon, past the now inhabited pueblo of that 
name, along the musical trout-brook to where an old mill once 
stood among the tall pines, one can clamber up a trail on 
either side of the canon to the plateau at the top, and thence 
less than an hour's walk will take one to either of these great 
aboriginal honeycomb homes. The Pu-ye, which is on the 
south side of the canon, is the largest, and has many hun- 
dreds of cave-rooms. They are burrowed out everywhere in 
the foot of the perpendicular white cliff, in tiers one above 
the other to a height of three stories. The caves are small, 
generally round rooms eight to twelve feet in diameter, with 
arched ceilings and barely high enough to allow a man to 
stand upright. The old smooth plaster on the walls remains 
to this day, and so do the little portholes of windows, and 
the niches for trinkets. In some places there is even a sec- 
ond cave-room back of the first. Here, and at the Rito, the 
estufas were carved out of the cliff, like the other rooms, but 
larger. Upon the top of the cliff, and in an almost impreg- 
nable position, are the ruins of a large square pueblo built of 
blocks of tufa — e\ddently the fortress and retreat of the 
dwellers in the caves in case of a very desperate attack. 
Against any ordinary assault, the masonry houses " down- 
stairs/' so to speak, with their inner cave-rooms, were safe 




THE WHITE HOUSE, CANON DE TsAy-EE. 



HOMES THAT WERE FORTS. 121 

enough. These houses of masonry at the foot of the cliff 
have all fallen ; but in the rocks the mortises which held the 
ends of their rafters are still plainly visible. 

In this same wild region are the only great stone idols (or, 
to speak more properly, fetiches) in the United States — the 
mountain lions of Cochiti. They are life-size, and carved from 
the sohd bed-rock on the top of two huge mesas. To this 
day, the Indians of Cochiti before a hunt go to one of these 
almost inaccessible spots, anoint the gi-eat stone heads, and 
dance by night a wild dance which no white man has seen or 
ever will see. 



montezuima's well. 




F 



\AR southwest of Moqui, and still in the 

edge of the great Diy Laud, is what I 

am inclined to rank as the most remarkable 

area of its kind in the southwest — though 

in this wonderland it is difficult enough to 

award that preeminence to any one locality. 

At least in its combination of archaeologic 

interest with scenic beauty and with some 

peerless natural curiosities, what may be 

called the Mogollon watershed is one of the most startling 

regions in America or in the world. 

The Mogollones* are not a mountain system as Eastern 
people imderstand the phrase. There is no great range, as 
among the Appalachians and the Rockies. The " sj^stem " is 
merely an enormous plateau, full three hundred miles across, 
and of an average height above the sea greater than that of 
any peak in the East : an apparently boundless plain, dotted 
only here and there with its few lonely "hangers-on" or 
"parasites" of peaks, — like the noble San Francisco triad 

* Spanish, " The hangers-on." 



MONTEZUMA'S WELL. 123 

near Flagstaff, — which in that vast expanse seem scarce to 
attain to the dignity of mounds. On the north this huge 
table-land melts into hazy slopes j but all along its southern 
edge it breaks off by sudden and fearful cliffs into a country 
of indescribable wildness. This great territory to the south, 
an empire in size, but largely desert and almost entirely wil- 
derness, has nevertheless the largest number of considerable 
streams of any equal area in the thirsty southwest. The 
Gila, the Rio Salado,* the Rio Verde, and others — though 
they woidd be petty in the East, and though they are small 
beside the Rio Grande and the Colorado — form, with their 
tributaries, a more extensive water-system than is to be found 
elsewhere in oui- arid lands. The Tontof Basin — scene of 
one of the brave Crook's most brilliant campaigns against 
the Apaches — is part of this wilderness. Though called a 
" basin," there is nothing bowl-like in its appearance, even 
as one sees down thousands of feet into it from the com- 
manding " Rim " of the Mogollones. It is rather a vast chaos 
of crags and peaks apparently rolled into it from the great 
breaking-off place — the wreck left by forgotten waters of 
what was once part of the MogoUon plateau. 

About this Tonto Basin, which is some fifty miles across, 
cluster many of the least-known yet greatest wonders of our 
country. South are the noble ruins of Casa Grande, and aU 
the Gila Valley's precious relics of the prehistoric. The Salt 
River Valley is one of the richest of fields for archa?ologic 

* "Salt River," a fine stream whose waters are really salt at points 
where great springs well up. 
t '^ Tonto" is Spanish for fool. 



124 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

research ; and tlie country of tlie Verde is nowise behind it. 
All across that strange area of forbidding wildernesses, 
threaded with small valleys that are green with the outposts 
of civilization, are strewn the gray monuments of a civiliza- 
tion that had worn out antiquity, and had perished and been 
forgotten before ever a Caucasian foot had touched the New 
World. The heirlooms of an unknown past are everywhere. 
No man has ever counted the crimibling ruins of all those 
strange little stone cities whose history and whose very 
names have gone from off the face of the earth as if they had 
never been. Along every stream, near every spring, on lofty 
lookout-crags, and in the faces of savage cliffs, are the long- 
deserted homes of that mysterious race — mysterious even 
now that we know theu' descendants. Thousands of these 
homes are perfect yet, thousands no more changed from the 
far, dim days when their swart dwellers hved and loved and 
suffered and toiled there, than by the gathered dust of ages. 
Very, very few Americans have ever at all explored this Last 
Place in the World. It has not been a score of years known 
to our civilization. There is hardly ever a traveler to those 
remote recesses ; and of the Americans who are setthng the 
pretty oases, a large proportion have never seen the wonders 
within a few leagues of them. It is a far, toilsome land to 
reach, and yet there is no reason why any young American 
of average health should not visit this wonderland, which 
is as much more thrilling than any popular American resort 
as the White Mountains are more thrilling than Coney Island 
on a quiet day. 



MONTEZUMA'S WELL. 125 

The way to reach this strangely fascinating region is by 
the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad to Prescott Junction, Ari- 
zona, four hundred and twenty-eight miles west of Albu- 
querque. Thence a little railroad covers the seventy miles 
to Prescott j and from Prescott one goes by the mail-buck- 
board or by private conveyance to Camp Verde, forty-three 
miles. Camp Verde is the best headquarters for any who 
would explore the marvelous country about it. Comfortable 
accommodations are there j and there can be procured the 
needful horses — for thenceforward horseback travel is far 
preferable, even when not absolutely necessary. There is no 
danger whatever nowadays. The few settlers are intelligent, 
law-abiding people, among whom the traveler fares very 
comfortably. 

The Verde* Valley is itself full of interest ; and so are all 
its half -valley, half -canon tributaries — Oak Creek, Beaver 
Creek, Clear Creek, Fossil Creek, and the rest. Away to the 
north, over the purple rim-rock of the Mogollones, peer the 
white peaks of the San Francisco range (one can also come 
to the Verde from Flagstaff, by a rough but interesting 
eighty-mile ride overland). All about the vaUey are mesas,j 
and cliffs so tall, so strange in form and color, so rent by 
shadowy canons as to seem fairly uneartlily. And follow 
whatever canon or chff you will, you shall find ever^^iere 
more of these strange ruins. They are so many hundi'eds, 

* Eio Verde, "Green Eiver," — so called from the verdure of its val- 
ley, which is in such contrast with its weird surroundings. 
t Table-lands. 



126 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 










' 'v^ 



-*:\\: 



MONTEZUMA S WELL. 



that while all are of deep interest I can here describe only 
the more striking types. 

Beaver Creek enters the Rio Verde about a mUe above the 
now abandoned fort. Its canon is by no means a large one, 
though it has some fine points. A long and rocky twelve 
miles up Beaver, past smiling little farms of to-day that have 
usurped the very soil of fields whose tilling had been forgot- 



MONTEZUMA'S WELL. 127 

ten when history Avas new, brings one to a wonder which is 
not '' the greatest of its kind," bnt the only. There is, I be- 
lieve, nothing else like it in the world. 

It has been named — by the class which has pitted the 
southwest with misnomers — "Montezuma's Well." It is 
hardly a weU, — though an exact term is difficult to find, — and 
Montezuma* never had anything to do with it ; but it is none 
the less wonderful under its misfit name. There is a legend 
(of late invention) that Montezuma, after being conquered 
by Cortez, threw his incalculable treasure into tliis safest of 
hiding-places ; but that is all a myth, since Montezuma had 
no treasures, and in any event could hardly have brought 
the fabled tons of gold across two thousand miles of desert 
to this " well," even if he had ever stuTcd outside the pueblo 
of Mexico after the Spaniards came — as he never did. But 
as one looks into the awesome abyss, it is almost easy to for- 
get history and believe anything. 

At this point, Beaver Creek has eaten away the side of a 
rounded hiU of stone which rises more than one hundred feet 
above it, and now washes the foot of a sheer cliff of striking 
picturesqueness. I can liaK imagine the feelings of the first 
white man who ever climbed that hill. Its outer show gives 
no greater promise of interest than do ten thousand other 
elevations in the southwest 5 but as one reaches a flat shoul- 
der of the hill, one gets a first glimpse of a dark rift in the 
floor-like rock, and in a moment more stands upon the brink 

* The war-chief of an ancient league of Mexican Indians, and not 
"Emperor of Mexico," as ill-informed historians assert. 



128 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

of au absolutely new experience. There is a vast, sheer well, 
apparently as cii-ciilar as that peculiar rock could be broken by 
desig-u, with sides of cliffs, and with a gloomy, mysterious lake 
at the bottom. The diameter of this basin approximates two 
hundred yards j and its depth from brink of cliff to surface 
of water is some eighty feet. One does not realize the dis- 
tance across until a powerful thrower tries to hurl a pebble 
to the farther wall. I believe that no one has succeeded in 
throwing past the middle of the lake. At fii'st sight one in- 
variably takes this remarkable cavity to be the crater of an 
extinct volcano, like that in the Zuni plains already referred 
to ; but a study of the unburnt limestone makes one give up 
that theory. The well is a huge ^^sink" of the horizontal 
strata in one particular undermined spot, the loosened circle 
of rock dropping forever from sight into a terrible subter- 
ranean abyss which was doubtless hollowed out by the ac- 
tion of springs far do\\ai in the lime-rock. As to the depth 
of that gruesome, black lake, there is not yet knowledge. I 
am assured that a sounding-line has been sent down three 
hundred and eighty feet, in a vain attempt to find bottom j 
and that is easily credible. Toss a large stone into that mid- 
night mirror, and for an hour the bubbles will struggle shiv- 
ering up from its unknown depths. 

The waters do not lave the foot of a perpendicular cliff all 
around the sides of that fantastic well. The unfathomed 
" slump " is in the center, and is separated from the visible 
walls by a narrow, submerged rim. One can wade out a few 
feet in knee-deep water, — if one have the courage in that 



MONTEZUMA'S WELL. 129 

"creepy" place, — and therij suddenly, as walking from a 
parapet, step off into the bottomless. Between this water- 
covered rim and the foot of the cliff is, in most places, a wild 
jumble of enormous square blocks, fallen successively from 
the precipices and lodged here before they could tumble into 
the lower depths. 

There are two places where the cUff can be descended from 
top to water's edge. Elsewhere it is inaccessible. Its dark, 
stained face, spht by peculiar cleavage into the semblance 
of giant walls, frowns down upon its frowning image in that 
dark mirror. The whole scene is one of utter grimness. 
Even the eternal blue of an Arizona sky, even the rare fleecy 
clouds, seem mocked and clianged in that deep reflection. 

Walking around the fissured brink of the well eastward, 
we become suddenly aware of a new interest — the presence 
of a human Past. Next the creek, the side of the well is 
nearly gone. Only a narrow, high wall of rock, perhaps one 
hundi'cd feet through at the base, less than a score at the top, 
remains to keep the well a well. On one side of this thin 
rim gapes the abyss of the well ; on the other the abyss to 
the creek. Upon this wall — leaving scarce room to step be- 
tween them and the brink of the well, and precariously cling- 
ing down the steep slope to the edge of the cliff that over- 
hangs the creek — are the tousled ruins of a strong stone 
building of many rooms, the typical fort-home of the ancient 
Pueblos. Its walls are still, in places, six to eight feet high ; 
and the student clearly makes out that the building was of 
two and three stories. It was a perfect defense to the In- 
9 



130 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

dians who erected it ; and was not only safe itself on tliat 
commanding percli, but protected tlia approach to the well. 
This is the only town I know of that was ever builded upon 
a natural bridge; as some houses in this same region are 
probably the only ones placed under such a cui-iosity. 

Leading from the center of this fort-house, the only easy 
trail descends into the well 5 and it is so steep that no foe 
could prosper on it in the face of any opposition. This brings 
us to a tiny green bench six or eight feet above the level of 
the dark lake, where two young sycamores and a few live-oak 
bushes guard a black cavity in the overhanging cliff. We 
look across the dark waters to the western wall, and are 
startled to see in its face a perfect chff-house, perched where 
the eagle might build his nest. A strange eerie for a home, 
surely ! There, on a dizzy little shelf, overhung by a huge 
flat rock which roofs it, stands this two-roomed type of the 
human dwelling in the old danger-days. From its window- 
hole a babe might lean out until he saw his dimpled image 
in the somber sheet below. Only at one end of the house, 
where a difficult trail comes up, is there room on the shelf 
for a dozen men to stand. In front, and at its north end, a 
goat could scarce find footing. The roof and floor and rear 
waU are of the soHd cHff, the other three waUs of stone ma- 
sonry, perfect and unbroken stiU. A few rods along the 
face of the rock to the north is another cliff-dweUing not so 
large nor so well preserved ; and farther yet is another. It 
is fairly appalling to look at those dizzy nests and remember 
that they were homes ! What eagle-race was this whose war- 



MONTEZUMA'S WELL. 131 

riors strung their bows, and whose women wove their neat 
cotton tunics, and whose naked babes rolled and laughed in 
such wild lookouts — the scowUng cliff above, the deadly lake 
so far below ! Or, rather, what grim times were those when 
farmers had to dwell thus to escape the cruel obsidian knife* 
and war-club of the merciless wandering savage ! 

But if we tui'n to the sycamore at our back, there is yet 
more of human interest. Behind the gray debris of the cliff 
gapes the low-arched mouth of a broad cave. It is a weird 
place to enter, under tons that threaten to fall at a breath ; 
but there have been others here before us. As the eye grows 
wonted to the gloom, it makes out a flat surface beyond. 
There, forty feet back from the mouth, a strong stone wall 
stretches across the cave ; and about in its center is one of 
the tiny doors that were characteristic of the southwest when 
a doorway big enough to let in a whole Apache at a time was 
unsafe. So the fort-house balanced on the cliff-rim between 
two abysses and the houses nestled in crannies of the bald 
precipice were not enough — they must build far in the very 
caves ! That wall shuts off a large, low, dark room. Beyond 
is another, darker and safer, and so on. To our left is an- 
other wall in the front of another branch of the cave ; and 
in that wall is a little token from the dead past. When I went 
there in June, 1891, my flash-light failed, and I lit a dry 
entrana\ to explore during the hour it would take the lens 

* The only knives in those days were sharp-edged flakes of obsidian 
(volcanic glass) and other stone. 

t The buckhom-cactus, which was the prehistoric candle. 



132 SOME STRANGE COKNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

to study out part of the cave in that gloom. And suddenly 
the unaccustomed tears came in my eyes j for on the flinty 
mortar of that strange wall was a print made when that 
mortar was fresh adobe mud, at least five hundred years 
ago, maybe several thousands, — the perfect imprint of a 
baby's chubby hand. And of that child, whose mud auto- 
graph has lasted perhaps as long as Caesar's fame, who may 
have wi'ought as deep impression on the history of his race 
as Caesar on the world's, we know no more than that careless 
hand-print, nor ever shall know. 

This left-hand cave is particularly full of interest, and is 
probably the best remaining example of this class of home- 
making by the so-called " Cliif -dwellers." With its numerous 
windings and branches, it is hundreds of feet in length ; and 
its rooms, formed by cross- walls of masonry, extend far into 
the heart of the hill, and directly under the fort-house. It 
seems to have been fitted for the last retreat of the people in 
case the fortress and the cliff -houses were captm^ed by an 
enemy. It was well stored with corn, whose mummied cobs 
are still there; and — equally important — it had abundant 
water. The weU seems to have no outlet — the only token of 
one visible from within being a little rift in the water-mosses 
just in front of the caves. But in fact there is a mysterious 
channel far down under the cliff, whereby the waters of the 
lake escape to the creek. In exploring the main cave one 
hears the sound of running water, and presently finds a place 
where one may dip a drink through a hole in the limestone 
floor of a subterranean room. The course of this lonely little 



MONTEZUMA'S WELL. I33 

brook can be traced for some distance through the cave, be- 
low whose floor it runs. Here and there in the rooms are 
lava hand-mills and battered stone hammers, and other relics 
of the forgotten people. 

Retm-ning to the creek at the foot of the hill, and foUow- 
ing the outer cliff up-stream a few hundred feet, we come to a 
very picturesque spot under a fine Httle precipice whose foot 
is guarded by stately sycamores. Here is the outlet of the 
subterranean stream from the well. From a Httle hole in the 
very base of the cliff the glad rivulet rolls out into the Hght 
of day, and tumbles heels over head down a little ledge to a 
pretty pool of the creek. 

The water of the well is always warmish, and in winter a 
Httle cloud of vapor hovers over the outlet. Between the 
cHff and the creek is pinched an irrigating-ditch, which car- 
ries the waters of the weU half a mUe south to irrigate the 
ranch of a smaU farmer. Probably no other man waters his 
garden from so strange a source. 



XL 



montezuivia's castle. 




OMEWHAT more than lialf-way back from 
Montezuma's Well to Camp Verde, but off the 
winding road, is another curiosity, only less 
important, known as "Montezuma's Castle." 
It is the best remaining specimen of what we 
may call the cave-pueblo — that is, a Pueblo Indian "com- 
munity-house" and fortress, built in a natural cave. The 
oft-pictured ruins in the Mancos canon are insignificant 
beside it. 

Here the tiny vaUey of Beaver Creek is very attractive. 
The long slope from the south bank lets us look far up to- 
ward the black rim of the Mogollones, and across the smil- 
ing Verde Valley to the fine range beyond. On the north 
bank towers a noble limestone cliff, two hundred feet high, 
beautifully white and beautifully eroded. In its perpendicu- 
lar front, half-way up, is a huge, circular natural cavity, very 
much like a giant basin tilted on edge j and therein stands 
the noble pile of " Montezuma's Castle." A castle it truly 
looks, as you may see from tlie illustration — and a much 
finer ruin than many that people rush abroad to see, along 



)J^'^\^', 










■-^fc*. 







"Montezuma's castle," seen from beaver creek. 



MONTEZUMA'S CASTLE. 137 

the historic Rhine. The form of the successive limestone 
ledges upon which it is built led the aboriginal builders to 
give it a shape unique among its kind. 

It is one of the most pretentious of the Pueblo ruins, as it 
is the most imposing, though there are many hundreds that 
are larger. 

From the clear, still stream, hemmed in by giant sycamores 
that have doubtless grown only since that strange, gi*ay ruin 
was deserted, the foot of the cliif is some three hundred feet 
away. The lowest foundation of the castle is over eighty feet 
above the creek j and from corner-stone to crest the building 
towers fifty feet. It is five stories taU, over sixty feet front 
in its widest part, and built in the form of a crescent. It 
contains twenty-five rooms of masonry; and there are, be- 
sides, many cave-chambers below and at each side of it — 
small natural grottos neatly walled in front and with wee 
doors The timbers of the castle are stiU in excellent pre- 
servation, — a dui*ability impossible to wood in any other cli- 
mate, — and some still bear the clear marks of the stone axes 
with which they were cut. The rafter-ends outside the waUs 
were " trimmed " by burning them off close. The roofs and 
floors of reed thatch and adobe mud are still perfect except 
in two or three rooms ; and traces of the last hearth-fire that 
cooked the last meal, dim centuries ago, are still there. In- 
deed, there are even a few relics of the meal itself — corn, 
dried cactus-pulp, and the like. 

The fifth story is nowhere visible from below, since it 
stands far back upon the roof of the fourth and under the 



138 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

hanging rock. In front it has a spacious veranda, formed 
by the roof of the fourth story, and protected by a parapet 
which the picture shows with its central gateway to which a 
hidder once gave access. It is only the upper story which 
can be reached by an outside ladder — all the others were 
accessible only through tiny hatchways in the roofs of those 
below. So deep is the great uptilted bowl in which the castle 
stands, so overhanging the wild brow of cliff above, that 
the sun has never shone upon the two topmost stories. 

There is but one way to get to the castle, and that is by 
the horizontal ledges below. These rise one above the other 
(like a series of shelves, not like steps), ten to fourteen feet 
apart, and fairly overhang. The aborigines had first to build 
strong ladders, and lay them from ledge to ledge ; and then 
up that dizzy footing they carried upon their backs the un- 
counted tons of stones and mortar and timbers to build that 
great edifice. What do you imagine an American architect 
would say, if called upon to plan for a stone mansion in such 
a place ? The original ladders have long ago disappeared ; 
and so have the modern ones once put there by a scientist at 
the fort. I had to climb to the castle by a crazy little frame 
of sycamore branches, dragging it after me from ledge to 
ledge, and sometimes lashing it to knobs of rock to keep it 
from tumbling backward do^vvn the cliff. It was a very 
ticklish ascent, and gave full understanding how able were 
the builders, and how secure they were when they had re- 
treated to this high-perched fortress and pulled up their lad- 
ders — as they undoubtedly did every night. A monkey 













■:'f:i#i\h;.,., ' 



"Montezuma's castle," from the foot of the cliff. 



MONTEZUMA'S CASTLE. 141 

could not scale the rock ; and the cliff perfectly protects the 
castle above and on each side. Nothing short of modern 
weapons could possibly affect this lofty citadel. 

Down in the valley at its feet — as below Montezuma's 
Well and the hundreds of other prehistoric dwellings in the 
canon of Beaver — are still traces of the little fields and of 
the acequias * that watered them. Even in those far days the 
Pueblos were patient, industrious, home-loving farmers, but 
harassed eternally by wily and merciless savages — a fact 
which we have to thank for the noblest monuments in our 
new-old land. 

* Th.e characteristic irrigating-ditches of the southwest. 




XII. 



THE GREATEST NATURAL BRIDGE ON EARTH. 

^OU all know of the Natural Bridge in Virginia, 
and perhaps have heard how the first and great- 
est president of the United States, in the ath- 
letic vigor of his youth, climbed and carved his 
name high on its cliff. A very handsome and 
pictiu'esqne spot it is, too ; but if a score of it were thrown 
together side by side, they would not begin to make one of 
the Natural Bridge of which I am going to tell you — one in 
the western edge of the Tonto Basin, Arizona, in the same 
general region as Montezuma's Well and Castle, but even 
less known than they. 

The Natural Bridge of Pine Creek, Ai'izona, is to the world's 
natural bridges what the Grand Canon of the Colorado is to 
the world's chasms — the greatest, the grandest, the most be- 
wildering. It is truly entitled to rank with the gi^eat natural 
wonders of the earth — as its baby brother in Virginia is not. 
Its grandeur is equally indescribable by artist and by writer 
— its vastness, and the peculiarities of its "architecture," 
make it one of the most difficult objects at which camera 
was ever leveled. No photograph can give more than a hint 



THE GREATEST NATURAL BRIDGE ON EARTH. 143 

of its appalling majesty, uo combination of photographs 
more than hints. There are photographs which do approxi- 
mate justice to bits of the Grand Canon, the Yosemite, the 
Yellowstone, the Redwoods, Niagara * j there never will be 
of the Natm-al Bridge of Arizona — for reasons which you 
will understand later. But perhaps with words and pictures 
I can say enough to lead you some time to see for yourself 
this marvelous spot. 

From Camp Verde the Natural Bridge lies a long, hard 
day's ride to the southeast. There is a government road — a 
very good one for that rough country — to Pine, so one may 
go by wagon all but five miles of the way. This road is fif- 
teen miles longer to Pine than the rough and indistinct mail- 
trail of tliii'ty-eight miles, which a stranger should not at- 
tempt to follow without a guide, and a weak traveler should 
not think of at all. About midway, this trail crosses the tre- 
mendous gorge of Fossil Creek — down and up pitches that 
try the best legs and lungs — and here is a very interesting 
spot. In the north side of Fossil Creek Canon, close to the 
trail and in plain sight from it, are lonely little cave-houses 
that look down the sheer cliffs to the still pools below. Sev- 
eral miles down-stream there is a fort-house, also. Where 
the trail crosses the canon there is no running water except 
in the rainy season ; but a few hundred yards further down 
are the great springs. Like hundreds of other springs in the 
west, they are so impregnated with mineral that they are 

* Wliose majestic Indian name, Nee-ah-gdli-rah, is quite lost in oui 
flat corruption Nigh-dgg-ara, 



144 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

constantly building great round basins for themselves, and 
for a long distance flow down over bowl after bowl. But 
unlike other springs, those of Fossil Creek build their basins 
of what seems crude Mexican onyx. The fact that these 
waters quickly coat twigs or other articles with layers of this 
beautiful mineral gives rise to the name of Fossil — almost 
as odd a misnomer as has the " Petrified Spring " of which a 
New Mexico lady talks. 

Passing through lonely Strawberry Valley, with its log 
farm-houses among prehistoric ruins, one comes presently 
over the last divide into the extreme western edge of the 
Tonto Basin, and down a steep canon to the stiff little Mor- 
mon settlement of Pine, on the dry creek of the same name. 
From there to the Natural Bridge — five miles down-stream 
— there is no road at all, and the trail is very rough. But 
its reward waits at the end. Leaving the creek altogether 
and taking to the hills, we wind among the giant pines, then 
across a wild, lava-strewn mesa, and suddenly come upon 
the brink of a striking canon fifteen hundred feet deep. Its 
west wall is an unspeakably savage jumble of red granite 
crags ; the east side a wooded, but in most places impassably 
steep bluff. The creek has split through the ruddy granite 
to our right a wild, narrow portal, below which widens an 
almost circular little valley, haK a mile across. Below this 
the canon piuches again, and winds away by grim gorges to 
where the blue Mazatzals bar the horizon. 

In the wee oasis at our feet there is as yet no sign of a 
natural bridge, nor of any other colossal wonder. There is 




LOOKING THROUGH THE SOUTH ARCH OF THE GREATEST NATURAL BRIDGE. 

10 



THE GREATEST NATURAL BRIDGE ON EARTH. 147 

a clearing amid tlie dense chaparral — a clearing with tiny 
house and barn^ and rows of fruit trees, and fields of corn 
and alfaKa. They are thirteen hundi-ed feet below us. 
Clambering down the steep and sinuous trail, among the 
chapparo and the huge flowering columns of the maguey, we 
come quite out of breath to the little cottage It is a lovely 
spot, bowered in vines and flowers, with pretty walks and 
arbors by which ripples the clear brook from a big spring at 
the very door. A straight, thick-chested man, with twinkling 
eyes and long gray hair, is making sham battle with a big 
rooster, while a cat blinks at them from the bunk on the 
porch. These are the only inhabitants of this enchanted 
valley — old " Dave " Go wan, the hermit, and his two mateless 
pets. A quaint, sincere, large-hearted old man is he who has 
wrought this little paradise from utter wilderness by force of 
the ax. Only those who have had it to do can faintly con- 
ceive the fearful toil of clearing off these semi- tropic jungles. 
But the result gives the hermit just pride. His homestead 
of one hundred and sixty acres contains a farmlet which is 
not only as pretty as may be found, but unique in the whole 
world. 

It is well to have this capable guide, for there is nowhere 
an equal area wherein a guide is more necessary. Think 
of Gowan himseK, familiar for years with his strange farm, 
being lost for three days within a hundred yards of his house. 
That sounds strange, but it is true. 

The old Scotchman is very tacitui^n at first, like aU who 
have reaUy learned the lessons of out-of-doors, but promptly 



148 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

accedes to a request to be shown his bridge. He leads the 
way out under his little bower of clematiSj down the terraced 
vineyard, along the corn-field, and into the pretty young or- 
chard of peach and apricot. Still no token of what we seek ; 
and we begin to wonder if a bridge so easily hidden can be 
so very big after all. There is even no sign of a stream. 

And on a sudden, between the very trees, we stand over a 
little water- worn hole and peer down into space. ^Ye are on 
the bridge now ! The orchard is on the bridge ! Do you know 
of any other fruit-trees that gi-ow in so strange a garden ? 
Of any other two-storied farm ? The rock of the bridge is 
at this one point less than ten feet thick ; and this odd little 
two-foot peep-hole, like a broken plank in the giant floor, 
was cut through by water. 

"Wait," chuckles the hermit, his eyes twinkling at our 
wonder ; " wait ! " And he leads us a few rods onw^ard, till 
we stand beside an old juniper on the very brink of a terrific 
gorge. We are upon the South Arch of the bridge, dizzily 
above the clear, noisy stream, looking down the savage canon 
in whose wdlds its silver thi^ead is straightway lost to view. 
The "floor" of the bridge here, as we shall also find it at the 
North Arch, has broken back and back toward its center, so 
that a bird's-eye view shows at each side of the bridge a hori- 
zontal arch. A ground plan of the valley would look some- 
thing like the sketch on the opposite page. 

Circling south along the southeast " pier," we start down a 
rugged, diflicult, and at times dangerous trail. A projecting 
crag of the pier — destined to be a great obstacle, later, in 



THE GREATEST NATURAL BRIDGE ON EARTH. 149 

our photographic attempts — shuts the bridge from view till 
we near the bottom of the gorge, and then it bursts upon us 
in sudden wonder. The hand of man never reared such an 
arch, nor ever shall rear, as the patient springs have gnawed 
here from eternal rock. Dark and stern, and fairly crushing 

•4. rliffS /50 />^^ 



G^^ 




^^P MountaH^ 



ROUGH GROUND-PLAN OF GOWAN's VALLEY. THE WHOLE IRREGULAR CIRCLE IS THE 
NEARLY LEVEL LIMESTONE BENCH WHICH IS OCCUPIED BY THE FARM. 



in its immensity, towers that terrific arch of rounded lime- 
stone. The gorge is wild beyond telling, choked with giant 
boulders and somber evergreens and bristling cacti until it 
comes to the very jaws of that grim gateway, and there even 
vegetation seems to shrink back in awe. Now one begins to 



150 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

appreciate the magnitude of the bridge, a part of whose top 
holds a five-acre orchard. In its eternal shadow is room for 
an army. 

The South Ai'ch, to which we have thus come, is the larger 
and in some respects the more imposing. From its top to 
the surface of the water is two hundred feet, and the pools 
are very deep. The span of the archway is over two hundred 
feet as we see it now from without 5 but we shall soon find 
it to be really very much greater. The groined limestone is 
smoothly rounded 3 and the fanciful waters seem to have 
had architectural training — for the roof is wonderfully 
rounded into three stupendous domes, each flanked by noble 
flying buttresses of startling symmetry. A photograph of 
that three-domed roof would be a treasure ; but it is among 
the many impossibilities of this baffling place. 

Climbing up the water- worn bed-rock into the cool dusk of 
the bridge — for the sun has never seen one-tenth of the way 
through this vast tunnel — we stand under the first dome. 
Away up to our left, on the west side of the stream, there is 
a sheK at the top of an impressive wall ; and mounting by 
ledges and a tall ladder, we find this little shelf to be an enor- 
mous level floor, running back three hundred feet west. Here, 
then, we see the extreme span of the bridge, over five hundred 
feet ; and here we find the central pier — a stupendous column 
from this floor to the vaulted roof, a column more than one 
hundred feet in circumference. How strange that the blind 
waters which ate out all the rest of this vast chamber should 
have left that one necessary pillar to support the roof ! 







r^^: srwirt- 







'>. 









V' 







"i. ..-^ 



ANOTHER VIEW OF THE GREAT BRIDGE. 






:\v 







THE GREATEST NATURAL BRIDGE ON EARTH. 153 

About midway of the stream's course under the bridge is 
the Great Basin — a pool which would be a wonder anywhere. 
It is a solid rock bowl, some seventy-five feet in diameter and 
ninety in depth j and so transparent that a white stone roUed 
down the strange natural trough over one hundred feet long 
in the side of the basin can be seen in all its bubbling course 
to the far bottom of that chilly pool. Fifty of the beautiful 
" Basin " in the Franconia Notch would not make one of this ; 
and the noble "Pool" itself^ in the same mountain para- 
dise, does not match it. The clear stream pours into this 
basin in a white fall of thirty feet ; but, dwarfed by its giant 
company, the fall seems petty. 

The North Ai'ch — to which we may come under the bridge 
by a ticklish climb around the Great Basin — is less regular 
but not less picturesque than the South Arch. It is more 
rugged in contour, and its buttresses, instead of being 
smooth, are wrought in fantastic figures, while strange sta- 
lactites fringe its top and sides. 

And now for the comparative magnitude of this greatest 
of natural bridges. Its actual span is over five hundred feet 
— that is, about five times the span of the Virginia Bridge. 
Its height from floor of bridge to surface of water is forty 
feet less than its small brother's j but to the bottom of 
erosion — the proper measurement, of course — it is fifty 
feet greater. But in its breadth — that is, measurement up 
and down stream — it is over six Imndred feet, or more than 
twelve times as wide as the Virginia Bridge ! So you see 
one could carve, from this almost unknown wonder, some- 



154 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

thing like sixty bridges, each equal to the greatest ciu'iosity 
of Virginia ! 

In these vast proportions lies the impossibility of ade- 
quately photographing this bridge. There is no point from 
which the eye can take it in at once. It is a wonder-book which 
must be tm^ned leaf by leaf. Miles of walking are necessary 
before one really understands. From the bed of the stream 
half the dignity of the arch is lost behind the boulders, if one 
gets off far enough to command the opening at a glance. If 
near enough for an unobstructed view, then the vast arch so 
overshadows us that neither eye nor lens can grasp it aU. 
And the wing-cliff which projects from the southeast pier — 
as you may see in the chief picture of the South Arch — 
makes it almost impossible to find a point, at sufficient dis- 
tance for photographing, whence one can see clear through 
the bridge. " Can't be done ! " reiterated the old hermit. 
"Been lots of professionals here from Phoenix with their 
machines, and aU they could get was pictures that look like 
caves. You can't show through with a picture, to prove it 's 
a bridge, at all ! " 

But it can be done ; and being bound to show you aU that 
photogi-aphy can possibly show of this wonder, I did it. It 
cost about twenty-four solid hours of painful and perilous 
climbing and reconnoissance, a good deal of blood-tribute 
to sharp rocks and savage cactus — to whose inhospitable 
thorns it was necessary to cling to get footing on some of 
those precipices — and the camera did its work from some of 
the dizziest perches that tripod ever had ; but here are the 



THE GREATEST NATURAL BRIDGE ON EARTH. 155 

pictures which do " show through that it 's a bridge." When 
you look at the little far circle of light, and realize that it is 
two hundred feet in diameter, you will begin to feel the 
distance from South Arch to North Arch under that terrific 
rock roof. 

Following up the wild bottom of the canon from the North 
Arch, around gigantic boulders and under hanging cliffs, we 
find many other interesting things. Directly we come to 
"The First Tree" — one of the very largest sycamores in the 
United States. The canon here is strangely picturesque. 
Its west wall is fifteen hundred feet high, a wilderness of 
splintered red granite, not perpendicular, but absolutely un- 
scalable. The east wall is of gray limestone, perpendicular, 
often overhanging, but nowhere over two hundred feet high. 
Gowan's farm comes to the very trees that lean over its 
brink, and he now shows us the " lower story " of his unique 
homestead. Not only does his orchard stand two hundred 
feet in air, with room beneath for some of the largest build- 
ings in America, but the rest of his farm is as " up-stairs," 
though in a different way. This fantastic east wall of the 
canon is fairly honeycombed with caves, whose ghostly cham- 
bers, peopled with white visions in stone, run back un- 
known miles. His whole farm, his very house, is undermined 
by them. The old hermit has made many journeys of ex- 
ploration in these caves, but has merely learned the begin- 
ning of their labyrinth. It was in one of these subterranean 
tours that he was lost. His torches gave out, food he had 
none, and for three days he faced a frightful death — their, 



156 SOME STRANGE CORNEES OF OUR COUNTRY. 

close to his own cottage, perhaps not a hundred feet from it. 
From several of these caves issue fine rivulets, that coat with 
limestone whatever comes in their way. Some time ago 
Gowan's pet pig fell off the edge of the up-stairs farm, and 
there it lies to-day in a clear pool, pink- white as the freshest 
pork, but fast turning into the most durable. It is an odd 
fact that Pine Creek as a visible stream starts at and depends 
upon Gowan's farm. It is nominally Pine Creek for ten 
miles above, but is only a dry wash, except in time of rains ; 
but the strong, clear stream which pours from under the 
South Ai'ch of the bridge is large and permanent. 

How was the bridge built ? By the same peerless architect 
that builded the greatest wonders of the earth — the architect 
of the Grand Canon and the Yellowstone, and the Yosemite 
— by Water. It seems probable that Gowan's little round 
valley was once a lake, dammed by ledges at the south end 
which have since disappeared. The rich alluvial soil found 
only here would indicate that. At aU events, here was once 
a great round blanket of limestone, many hundred feet thick, 
laid down flat upon the giant lap of the gi'anite. From un- 
known storage-caverns of the Mogollon watershed subterra- 
nean passages led hither, and through them flowed strong 
springs. In time the water — whether stored in a lake upon 
this limestone bench, or merely flowing over — began to bm'- 
row " short cuts '^ through it, as water always will in hme- 
rock. As the west side of the valley was lowest, there toiled 
the greatest throng of water- workmen. Perhaps it was a 
little fellow no bigger than your fist who fii'st made passage 



THE GREATEST NATURAL BRIDGE ON EARTH. 159 

for himself through what is now the Natural Bridge. And 
he called his brother waters, and they crowded in after him ; 
and each as he passed gnawed with his soft but tii-eless teeth 
at the stone, and carried his mouthful of lime-dust off down 
the valley, chuckling as he ran. And slowly so the tunnel 
grew. If men were there then, the life of generations would 
have seen no change ; but time is the most abundant thing 
in creation (except for lis) ; and time was there, and now the 
dark winding burrow of a rivulet has become one of the 
noblest passage-ways on earth. The hermit who owns it was 
born in Scotland, but has grown American in every fiber. 
He refuses to make a mercenary income from his wonder- 
land. It is free for all to see — and his kindly help with it. 
He wants to dedicate his homestead to the government, and 
to have it accepted, made accessible, and cared for as a na- 
tional park — as it is most worthy to be. 

I often wonder if there were not great poets among the 
Indians of the old days. Indeed, I am sui'e there must have 
been in the race which invented the poetry of the folk-lore 
I have gathered among them. And when one sees amid 
what noblest works of Nature they lived in those days, one 
may well believe that bronze Homers are buried in that 
buried past. Science has at last learned that there can be 
no real study of history without consideration of physical 
geography as its chief factor. A race grows into character 
according to the country it inhabits ; and the utmost savage 
would grow (in centuries) to be a different man when he had 
removed from the duU plains to the Grand Canon, the San 



160 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

Juan, Acoma, the Verde cliffs, the Tonto Basin, or any other 
spot where the Pueblos lived five hundred years ago. For 
here at the bridge they were, too. They tilled Gowan's two- 
story farm, and dwelt in the caves of his basement, perhaps 
while his ancestors were yet naked savages in old Scotia. 
Their rude implements and fabrics are everywhere; and 
among many valuable rehcs from that region I brought 
home a fetich* which is quite priceless — a symbol of the 
eagle holding a rattlesnake in his talons, carved from an un- 
known stone wliicli baffles the file. Fancy the Pueblo boys 
and gh'ls of the Dark Ages with those giant domes of the 
Natural Bridge for a roof to their play-ground, the Great 
Basin for a " s^dmming-hole," and miles of stalactite caves 
to play hide-and-seek in ! 

There are countless minor natural bridges in the south- 
west, including a very noble one in the labyrinthine cUffs of 
Acoma. There is a curious natural bridge near Fort Defi- 
ance, N. M. It has an arch of only about sixty feet, but is 
remarkable because it was carved not by water but by sand- 
laden winds, as are some of the most beautiful and fantastic 
erosions of the dry southwest. 

* Not an idol, but the sacred symbol of some divine Power. 




1=1 

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THE EAGLE FETICH, ACTUAL SIZE. 



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SOME LEAVES KKOM THE STONE AUT0C;KAPH-AI.KUM. 




XIII. 

THE STONE AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM. 

AM not SO sure about the present generation — 
for these years on the frontier have given me 
httle chance to know the new boys as well as 
an oldish boy would like to — but with most 
young Americans of my day the autograph- 
album was a cherished institution. It was a very pretty 
habit, too, and a wise one, thus to press a flower from each 
young friendship. Not that the autographs were always wise 
— how well I remember the boys who "tried to be funny," 
and the girls who were dolefully sentimental, and the bud- 
ding geniuses who tottered under thoughts palpably too 
heavy for the unformed handwiiting, in the thumbed red 
morocco books of twenty years ago ! But the older those 
gi'imy albums grow, the more fully I feel that they were 
worth while, and that it is a pity we do not keep more of 
the boy '• greenness " into the later years j for there are more 
plants than the inanimate ones whose life is dearest and 
most fragrant while they are green. 

I shall never forget the supreme moments when the good 
gray LongfeUow and cheerful, rheumatic " Mrs. Partington " 



164 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

christened my last autograpli-album with theii* names, which 
were for a long time my chief est treasures — until that dear- 
est hero of boyhood, Captain Mayne Reid, eclipsed them all. 
That seems very far back ; but the crowded years between, 
with all theu' adventures and dangers, have brought no 
keener joys. And last summer the boyish triumph came 
back clear and strong as ever, when I stood under one of the 
noblest cliffs in America and read in its vast stone pages the 
autographs of some of the great fii'st heroes of the New 
World. 

"The Stone Autograph- Album " lies in a remote and al- 
most unknown corner of western New Mexico. It is fifty 
miles southwest of the Atlantic and Pacific Raih-oad from 
Grant's Station, and can be reached only by long drives 
through lonely but picturesque canons and great pine forests. 
It is but four miles from the half-dozen Mexican houses of 
Las Tinajas, where the traveler can find food and shelter. 
The journey from the railroad is not dangerous, and need 
not be uncomfortable ; but one should be careful to secui-e 
good horses and a guide, for the roads are not like those of 
the East. 

Climbing and descending the long slopes of the Zuiii range, 
we emerge at last from the forest to a great plateau, its 
southeastern rim crowded with extinct volcanoes, whose som- 
ber cones explain the grim, black leagues of lava-flows that 
stretch everywhere. To the southwest the plateau dips into 
a handsome valley, guarded on the north by the wilderness 
of pines, and on the south by a long line of those superb 



THE STONE AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM. 165 

mesas of many-colored sandstone which are among the char- 
acteristic beauties of the southwest. Thi'ough this valley ran 
an ancient and historic road — now hard to trace, for so 
many generations has it been abandoned — from Zuni to the 
Rio Grande. Many of you have akeady heard something of 
Zufii, that strange gray pyramid of the adobe homes of fifteen 
hundred Pueblo Indians. It is what is left of the famous 
" Seven Cities of Cibola/' whose fabled gold inspired the dis- 
covery of New Mexico in 1539, and afterward the most mar- 
velous marches of exploration ever made on this continent. 
Coronado, that gi'eatest explorer, and the first Caucasian sol- 
dier who ever entered New Mexico, marched from the Gulf 
of California almost to where Kansas City now is, in 1540, 
besides making many other expeditions only less astounding. 
And after his day, the most of the other Spanish world-find- 
ers came fii'st to Zuni and thence trudged on to the Rio 
Grande, and to the making of a heroic history which is quite 
without paraUel. 

As we move west down the vaUey, the mesas grow taUer 
and more beautiful; and presently we become aware of a 
noble rock which seems to be chief of all its giant brethren. 
Between two juniper-dotted canons a long, wedged-shaped 
mesa tapers to the valley, and terminates at its edge in a 
magnificent cliff which bears striking resemblance to a titanic 
castle. Its front soars aloft in an enormous tower, and its 
sides are sheer waUs two hundred and fifteen feet high, and 
thousands of feet long, with strange white battlements and 
wondrous shadowy bastions. Nothing without wings could 



166 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

mount there ; but a few hundred yards south of the tower 
the mesa can be scaled — by a preliistoric trail of separate 
foot-holes worn deep in the solid rock. At the top, we find 
that the wedge is hollow — a great V, in fact, for a canon from 
behind splits the mesa almost to its apex. Upon the arms of 
this V are the ruins of two ancient pueblos, which had been 
abandoned before our history began, facing each other across 
that fearful gulf. These stones '^cities" of the prehistoric 
Americans were over two hundred feet square and four or 
five stories tall — great terraced human beehives, with sev- 
eral hundred inhabitants each. 

This remarkable and noble rock was known to the Spanish 
pioneers much more than two centuries before any of our 
Saxon forefathers penetrated the appalling deserts of the 
southwest; and even in this land full of wondrous stone 
monuments it was so striking that they gave it a name for 
its very own. They called it El Morro — the Castle — and 
for over three hundred years it has borne that appropriate 
title, though the few hundred "Americans " who have seen it 
know it better as Inscription Rock. It is the most precious 
chff, historically, possessed by any nation on earth, and, I 
am ashamed to say, the most utterly uncared-for. 

Lying on the ancient road from Zuni to the river — and 
about thirty miles from the former — it became a most im- 
portant landmark. The necessities of the wilderness made 
it a camping-place for all who passed, since the weak spring 
under the shadow of tliat great rock was the first water in a 
hard day's march. There was also plenty of wood near, and 



THE STONE AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM. 167 

a fair shelter under tlie overhanging precipices. So it was 
that every traveler who came to the Morro in those grim cen- 
turies behind this stopped there, and that included nearly 
every notable figure among the first heroes who trod what is 
now our soil. And when they stopped, something else hap- 
pened — something which occurred nowhere else in the 
United States, so far as we know. The sandstone of the cliff 
was fine and very smooth, and when the supper of jerked 
meat and popcorn-meal porridge had been eaten, and the 
mailed sentries ])\\t out to withstand the prowling Apaches, 
the heroes wi'ote their autographs upon a vast perpendicular 
page of stone, with their swords which had won the New 
World for pens ! 

You must not imagine that this came from the trait which 
gives ground for our modern rhyme about '' fools' names, like 
their faces." These old Spaniards were as unbraggart a set 
of heroes as ever lived. It was not for notoriety that they 
wrote in that wonderful autograph-album, not in vanity, nor 
idly. They were piercing an unknown and frightful wilder- 
ness, in which no civilized being dwelt — a wilderness which 
remained until our own times the most dangerous area in 
America. They were few — never was their army over two 
hundred men, and sometimes it was a tenth of that — amid 
tens of thousands of warhke savages. The chances were a 
hundred to one that they would never get back to the world 
— even to the haK-savage world of Mexico, which they had 
just conquered and were Christianizing. No ! What they 
wrote was rather hke leaving a headstone for unknown 



168 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

graves ; a word to say, if any should ever follow, " Here were 
the men who did not come back." It was a good-by like 
the " Caesar, we, who are to die, salute you." 

Coronado, the first explorer, did not pass Inscription Rock, 
but took the southern trail from Zuni to the wondrous cliff- 
city of Acoma. But among those who came after him, the 
road by the Morro soon became the accepted thorouglifare 
from Old to New Mexico j and in its mouse-colored cliffs we 
can read to-day many of the names that were great in the 
early history of America. Such queer, long names some of 
them are, and in such a strange, ancient hand- writing ! If 
any boy had some of those real autographs on paper, they 
would be worth a small fortune ; and if I were not so busy 
an old boy, I would trace some of them in one of my old 
autograph-albums, exactly as they are written in that lonely 
rock. But as it is, you shall have the photographic fac- 
similes which I made purposely for you, and do with them 
what you like. 

On the southeast wall of the Morro are some very hand- 
some autographs, and some very important ones. The pio- 
neers who passed in the winter generally camped under this 
cliff to get the sun's warmth, while those who came in sum- 
mer sought the eternal shade of the north side. AU the 
old inscriptions are in Spanish — and many in very quaint 
old Spanish, of the days when spelhng was a very elastic 
thing, and with such remarkable abbreviations as our own 
forefathers used as many centuries ago. All around these 
brave old names which are so precious to the historian — and 



THE STONE AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM. 169 

to all who admire heroism — are Saxon names of the last few 
decades. Alas ! some of these late-comers have been vandals, 
and have even erased the names of ancient heroes to make a 
smooth place for their "John Jones'' and "George Smith." 
That seems to me an even more wicked and wanton thing 
than the chipping of historic statues for relics; and I do 
not, anyhow, envy the man who conld write his petty name 
in that sacred roster. 

Near the tall, lone sentinel pine which stands by the south 
wall of the Morro is a modest inscription of great interest 
and value. It is protected from the weather by a little brow 
of rock, and its straggling letters are legible still, though 
they have been there for two hundred and eighty-six years ! 
It is the autograph of that brave soldier and wise first gov- 
ernor in the United States, Juan de Onate. He was the real 
founder of New Mexico, since he established its government 
and built its first two towns. In 1598 he founded San Ga- 
briel de los Espanoles, which is the next oldest town in our 
country. St. Augustine, Florida, is the oldest, having been 
founded in 1565, also by a Spaniard. Next comes San Ga- 
briel, and third Santa Fe, which Oiiate founded in 1605. 
But before there was a Santa Fe, he had made a march 
even more wonderful than the one which brought him to 
New Mexico. In 1604 he trudged, at the head of thirty men, 
across the fearful trackless desert from San Gabriel to the 
Gulf of California, and back again ! And on the return from 
that marvelous "journey to discover the South Sea" (the 
Pacific) he camped at the Morro and wrote in its eternal 




170 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

page. Here it is, just as he wi'ote it two years before oiu* 
Saxon forefathers had huilt a hut in America, even on the 
sea-coast — while he was fifteen hundred miles from the ocean. 
The inscriptions are nearly all of such antique lettering, and 
so fiill of abbreviations, that I shall give you the Spanish 

f . ' :■' 'I 

I 

FIG. 1. JUAN DE ON ATE. 

text in type with an interlined translation, so that you may 
pick out the queerly wiitten words and get an idea of 
sixteenth and seventeenth century "short-hand." Ohate's 
legend reads : 

" Paso por aqiii el adelantado * don Jua de Onate al descubri- 

Passed by here the officer Don Juan de Onate to the discov 

mento de la mar del sur a 16 de Ahril do. 1605 J^ 

ery of the sea of the South on the 16th of April, year 1605. 

This is the oldest identified autograph on the Eock except 
one, which is not absolutely certain — that of Pedro Romero ; 
his date reads apparently 17580. Either some one has fool- 
ishly added the nought — which is very improbable — or the 
1 is simply an i, and the supposed 7 an old-fashioned 1. 

* We have no exact word for adelantado. He was the ofl&cer in 
command of a new country. 



THE STONE AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM. 171 

This is very likely. "And" — ij or i, in Spanish — was often 
written before the year; and the chances ai'e that this in- 
scription means '^ Pedro Romero and 1580." In that case, 
Romero was one of the eight companions with whom Fran- 
cisco Sanchez Chamuscado made his very remarkable march 
of exploration in that year. 

Just below Onate's autograph is one which some careless 
explorers have made eighty years earher than his. The sec- 
ond figure in the date does look like a 5 ; but no white man 
had ever seen any part of New Mexico in 1526 ; and the fig- 
ure is really an old-style 7. The autograph is that of Bas- 
conzelos, and reads : 

" For aqtii pazo el Alferes D^ Joseph de Payba Basconzelos el 

By here passed the Ensign Don Joseph de Payba Basconzelos, the 

afio que tnijo el Cavildo del Reyno a sii costa d IS de Febo de 

year that he brought the town-council of the kingdom (N. M. ) at his own expense 

1726 anosP 

on the 18th of Feb., of 1726 years (the year 1736). 

Not far away is the pretty autograph of Diego de Vargas 
— that dashing but generous general who reconquered New 
Mexico after the fearful Pueblo Indian rebellion of 1680. In 
that rebellion twenty-one gentle missionaries and four hun- 
dred other Spaniards were massacred by the Indians in one 
day, and the survivors were driven back into Old Mexico. 
This inscription was written when Vargas made his first 
dash back into New Mexico — a prelude to the years of terrific 
fighting of the Reconquest. He wrote : 

" Aqui estaba el Genh Fn. Fo. de Vargas, quien conquisto d 

Here was the General Don Diego de Vargas, who conquered for 



172 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 
nuestra Santa Fe y a la Real Corona todo el Nuevo Mexico a sn 

our Holy Faith and for the Royal Crown (of Spain) all the New Mexico, at his 

costaj aiio de 169 2 P 

own expense (in the) year of 1693. 

A little north of Vargas's valuable inscription is that (fig- 
lu'e 2) of the expedition sent by Governor Francisco Mar- 
tinez de Baeza to arrange the troubles in Zuni, on the 
urgent request of the chief missionary Fray Cristobal de 
Quiros. It reads : 

" Pasamos por aqui el sargento mai/or, y el cajntan Jua. de 

We pass by here, the lieutenant-colonel, and the Captain Juan de 

Arecliuleta, y el aiudante Diego Martin Barha, y el Alferes 

Arechuleta, and the lieutenant Diego Martin Barba, and the Ensign 

Agostyn de Ynojos, afio de 1636 P 

Augustin de Ynojos, in the year of 1636. 

Below thig are some ancient Indian pictogi^aphs. The sar- 
gento mayor (Literally "chief sergeant") who is not named 



t 



I • bay b(]y0i^tm\AS ^nm-^ ^^o i 

FIG. 2. DIEGO MARTIN BARBA AND ALFERES AGOSTYN. 



THE STONE AUTOGRAPH- ALBUM. 173 

was probably brave Francisco Gromez. The inscription is 
in the handwriting of Diego Martin Barba, who was the 
official secretary of Governor Baeza. In a little cavity near 
by is the inscription of "Juan Garsya, 1636." He was a 
member of the same expedition. The handsome autograph 
of Ynojos appears in several places on the rock. 

Two quaint lines, in tiny but well-preserved letters, recall 
a pathetic story. It is that of a poor common soldier, who 
did not write his year. But history supplies that. 

^^ Soy cle memo de Felipe de Ay^ellano d 16 de Setiemhre, 

I am from the hand of Felipe de Arellano, on the 16th of September, 

soldadoJ^ 

soldier. 

He was one of the Spanish " garrison " of three men left to 
guard far-off Zuni, and slain by the Indians in the year 1700. 
Not far away is the autograph of the leader of the " force " of 
six men who went in 1701 from Santa Fe to Zuni (itself a 
desert march of three hundred miles) to avenge that massa- 
cre, the Captain Juan de Urribarri. He left merely his name. 
An autograph nearly obliterated is that of which we can 
still read only : 

" Paso por aqui Fran^. de An . . . Alma . . /' 

This was Francisco de Anaia Almazan, a minor but heroic 
officer who served successively under Governor Otermin, the 
great soldier Cruzate, and the Reconqueror Vargas, and was 
in nearly every action of the long, red years of the Pueblo 
Rebellion. At the time of the great massacre in 1680, he was 
in the pueblo of Santa Clara. His three companions were 



174 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

butchered by the savages, and Abnazan escaped alone b}' 
swiiniiiiug- the Rio Grande. He probably wi'ote in the album 
of the Morro in 1692, at the same time with De Vargas. An- 
other autograph of a member of the same expedition is that 
of Diego Lucero de Godoy (figm-e 3). He was then a sar- 
gento mayor, a very good and brave officer, who was with 
Governor Otermin in the bloody siege of Santa Fe by the 
Indians, and in that dii'e retreat when the bleeding Spaniards 
hewed their way tln^ough the swarming beleaguers and fought' 



. yy,y>i^.^ v-\. t ;j ^. ; ;y ■ ■.; ;;,.--"'^ , ; : .y .' jVj:-/y;J ;ly;■-■^4jy■>y,■^ jiffl1y3f7^^ip«;i^«yyl?S^ 







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FIG. 3. DIEGO LUCERO DE GODOY. 



a passage to El Paso. He was also in nearly every battle of 
the Reconquest. Salvador Holguin, whose autograph is also 
on the rock, was another of Vargas's soldiers. Of about the 
same time were several Naranjos, of whom Joseph was the 
first alcalde mayor (about equivalent to district judge) of 
Zuni after the Reconquest. Of a much earlier date was the 
unknown soldier " Juan Gonzales, 1629 " (figure 4). A subse- 
quent Gonzales passed and wrote here seventy-one years later, 
in a very peculiar '' fist " : 

"Pase 2)or aquy el ano 1700 yo. Ph. Gonzales J^ 

I passed by here (in) the year 1700, I, Felipe Gonzales. 



THE STONE AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM. 



175 



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d 



FIG. 4. JUAN GONZALES. 

A jirma as peculiar as that of our owu famous " puzzler/' 
General Spinner, is appended to the entry (figure 5) : 

"A 5 del mes de Junyo deste afio de 1709 paso por aquy para 

On the 5th of the month of June of this year of 1709 passed by here, bound 

Zuni Eamon Paez JurfdoJ^ 

for Zuni, Ramon Paez Hurtado. 










FIG. 5. RAMON PAEZ HURTADO. 



176 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

Another Hiirtado wrote ou the other wall, in qneer little 
square characters (figure 6) : 

^'' El ilia 14 (le Julio tie 1736 pasopor aqui el Gen^ Juan Paez 

(On) the day 14th of July of 1736 passed by here the General Juan Paez 

Huriado^Yisitador — y en sti compafiia el cdbo Joseph Trnrilloy 

Hurtado, Official Inspector, and in his company the corporal Joseph Truxillo. 

This one was a son of the great General Hurtado — the 
bosom friend of Vargas, repeatedly lieutenant-governor of the 
territory, and in 1704 acting governor. He was afterward 
greatly persecuted by Governors Cubero and Martinez. The 
son also was a general, but not so prominent as his father. 



8?: 






life 



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FIG. 6. JUAN PAEZ HURTADO. 

On the north side of the Morro are the longest and most 
elaborate inscriptions, the rock being there more favorable. 
The earliest of them are the two long legends of the then 
governor of New Mexico, Don Francisco Manuel de Silva 
Nieto. They were not written by him, but by some admiring 
officer in his little force. A part has been effaced by the 
modern vandal, but enough remains to mark that very nota- 
ble journey. The first says (figiu*e 7) : 



THE STONE AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM. 177 



FIG. 7. DON FRANCISCO MANUEL DE SILVA NIETO. 

" Aqui . . . [paso el Gober] nador Don Francico Manuel de 

Here passed the Governor Don Francisco Manuel de 

Silva Nieto que lo ynpuc'ible tiene ya snjeto sii Braco yndubifabh 

Silva Nieto that the impossible has already (been) effected (by) his arm indom- 

y su Balor, con los Garros del Bei N'uestro Sefior; cosa que solo 

Itable and his valor, with the wagons of the King Our Master ; a thing which 

el Puso en este Bfecto, de Abgosto 9, Seiscientos Beinte y 

only he put in this shape on August 9, (one thousand) six hundred, twenty and 

Neuve, que . . . a Gufii Base y la Fe lleveJ^ 

nine, that to Zuni I passed and the Faith carried. 

What is meant by Governor Nieto's " carrying the faith '^ 
(that is, Christianity) is that on this expedition he took along 
the heroic priests who estabhshed the mission of Zuni, and 
who labored alone amid that savage flock. 
12 



178 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 



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Nieto's other inscription 
(fig'ure 8), written on an- 
other journey, is in a more 



characteristic 
It says : 



han(l^\Titing. 



^^ El TUnsfrisimo Sen or y 

The most Illustrious Sir and 

Cap. gen. de las pros, del 

Captain-General of the provinces of 

mieho Mexco. For el Rey nro. 

the New Mexico for the King Our Mas- 

8r. Paso por aqui de Imelta de 

ter, passed by here on the return from 

los puehlos de Zufd a los 29 de 

the villages of Zuiii on the 29th of 

Jidio del a no de 1620; y los 

July of the year of 1629 and them (the 

puso en paz d su iwndimto.^ 

Indians) he put in peace at their 

pidiendole su fahor como ha- 

request, (they) asking his favor as 

sallos de su mag*^. Y de mieho 

vassals of His Majesty. And anew 

dieron la ohedienria ; fodo lo 

they gave obedience; all of which 

que Jiiso con el agasaxe, selo, y 

he did with persuasiveness, zeal and 

jjrudencia, como tan clirisfian- 

prudence, like such a most Chris- 

isimo . . . tani j^fz/'f/V^Jwr y 

tian, such a careful and 

gallardo soldado de inacahahle 

gallant soldier of tireless 

y . . . memoria . . ,^ 

and memory . . ." 



THE STONE AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM. 179 

Another long inscription, not so handsomely written but 
very characteristic, is that of Governor Martinez, near by : 

^^Ano de 1716 a los 26 de Agosto paso por aqui Bon Feliz 

(In the) year of 1716 on the 26th of August, passed by here Don Feliz 

Martinez^ Govern^\ y Cap^, OenK de este Reyno, d la reduczion 

Martinez, Governor and Captain-General of this Kingdom, to the reduction 

y conq^^. de Moqiii; y en su compania el Rdo. P. F. Antonio 

and conquest of Moqui ; and in his company the Reverend Father Fray Antonio 

Camargo, Custodio y Juez EclesiasticoJ^ 

Camargo, Custodian and Judge-Ecclesiastic. 

This was an expedition to reclaim to Christianity the lofty 
cliff -built pueblos of Moqui, which had slain their mission- 
aries; but it signally failed, and Martinez was recalled in 
disgrace from his governorship. He and Pedro Rodriguez 
Cubero were the worst governors New Mexico ever had after 
1680, and no one was sorry for him. The Custodio was the 
local head of the Church in New Mexico. A cimous flour- 
ish at the end of his autograph is the ruhrica much affected 
by writers of the past centuries. There are many character- 
istic rubricas among the names on the Morro. 

The first visit of a bishop to the southwest is recorded in a 
very clear inscription, which runs : 

"Dm 28 de Sept. de 1737 afios llego aqui el Hlmo. 

(On the) day 28th of September of 1737 years, reached here the most illus- 

Sr. Dr. Dn. Mm. De Mizaecocliea, Ohpo. de Durango, y el 

trious Sir Doctor Don Martin de Elizaecochea, Bishop of Durango, and (on) the 

dia 29 paso a Zuni.^' 

day 29th went on to Zuni. 

New Mexico belonged to the bishopric of Durango (Mexico) 
until 1852. A companion autograph is that of the " Bachil- 
ler " (Bachelor of Arts) Don Ygnacio de Arrasain. He was 



180 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

witli the bishop on this jouriic}' — an ardnous and dangerous 
journey, even a century later than 1737. 

One of the most puzzling inscriptions in this precious au- 
tograph album, and a very important one, is that of the sol- 
dier Lujan (figure 9). It is almost in hieroglyphics, and was 
never deciphered until I put it into the hands of a great 






ii!^^s«5»^sp^^ q 



r-iJA-- 






■ "s" 



^^^ 




I-'lu. '.J. i.L'JAN. 



student of ancient Avritings — though after he solved the 
riddle it is clear enough to any one who knows Spanish. Its 
violent abbreviations, the curious capitals "v\ath the small final 
letters piled " overhead," and its reference to a matter of his- 
tory of which few Americans ever heard, combined to keep 
it long a mystery. Reduced to long-hand Spanish, it reads : 
" Se ixisaron a 23 de Marzo de 1632 cvnos a la hemjanza de 

They passed on the 23d of March of 1633 years to the avenging of the 

Muerte del Padre Letrado. LujanP 

death of the Father Letrado. 



THE STONE AUTOGRAPH-ALBUM. 181 

What a romance and what a tragedy are hidden in those 
two lines ! Father Francisco Letrado was the first perma- 
nent missionary to the strange pyramid-pneblo of Znni. He 
came to New Mexico abont 1628, and was first a missionary 
to the Jnmanos — the tattooed savages who Hved in the edge 
of the gi^eat plains, east of the Rio Grande. In 1629, you 
will remember, the mission of Zuni was founded, and he was 
sent to that lone, far parish and to his death. He labored 
earnestly with his savage flock, but not for long. In Febru- 
ary, 1630, they mercilessly slew him. Francisco de la Mora 
CebaUos was then Governor of New Mexico, and he sent this 
expedition "to avenge Father Letrado's death," under the 
lead of the maestro de campo (Colonel) Tomas de Albizu. 
Albizu performed his mission successfully and without blood- 
shed. The Zunis had retreated to the top of their thousand- 
foot cliff, the To-yo-al-la-na, but were induced to return 
peaceably to their pueblos. Lujan was a soldier of the ex- 
pedition. 

There are a great many other old Spanish autographs on 
the sheer walls of the Morro j but these are the principal ones 
so far deciphered. Of the American names only two or three 
are of any note at all. The earhest date from 1849, and are 
those of Lieutenant Simpson and his scientific companion 
Kern — doubtless the first of us to visit the spot. All the 
other Saxon names are very recent and very unimportant. 

I am sure that if any of my readers had any one of those 
old autographs in his album, he would guard it jealously; 
and it is a shame that we are neglecting that noble stone 



182 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

book of the Morro. A few more years and a few more van- 
dals, and nothing will be left of what now makes the rock 
so precious. The government should protect it, as it would 
be protected in any other civilized land ; and when some of 
you get into Congress, I hope you will look to this and other 
such duties. Otherwise the next generation will awake only 
to find that it has lost a unique and priceless treasure. 



XIV. 



THE RIVERS OF STONE. 




a line were drawn from Lake Manitoba to the 
Gulf of Mexico at Galveston, approximately 
halving the United States, and Ave could get 
these two halves on a small enough scale to 
compare them side by side, we should find 
that Nature herself had ah-eady made as striking a division. 
We should find such a difference between them as we now 
scarcely realize. Broadly speaking, we should discover the 
eastern half to be low, rather flat, wooded and wet ; the western 
half many times as high above sea-level, extremely mountain- 
ous, generally bare, and phenomenally dry. Its landscapes are 
more brown than green, its ranges barren and far more bris- 
tling than those of the east ; and its plains vast bleak uplands. 
Its very air is as different from that of the eastern half as 
white is different from gray. It is many times lighter and 
many times clearer, and incomparably drier. It is a sort of 
wizard air, which plays aU sorts of good-natured tricks upon 
the stranger. Delicious to breathe, a real tonic to the lungs, 
a stimulant to the skin, it seems to delight in fooling the eyes. 
Through its magic clearness one sees three times as far as in 
the heavier atmosphere of the east, and the stranger's esti- 



184 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

mates of distance have all to be made over. It is no uncom- 
mon thing for the traveler to deem an object but five miles 
off when it is really twenty miles or even more. And a still 
more startling trick of this strange atmosphere is that it very 
frequently makes one see things which do not exist at all ! 
It is a cm-ious paradox that this atmospheric freak, of which 
you know as the mirage, is confined to dry countries — des- 
erts, in fact — and that the illusion it most commonly pre- 
sents is water! To^vns and mountains and animals are 
sometimes pictured, but of tenest it is a counterfeit of water 
that is shown the weary traveler in a land where there is no 
water, and where water means life. 

The very landscape under this wonderful air has an ap- 
pearance to be found nowhere else. Its barrenness seems en- 
chanted ; and there is an unearthly look about it aU. Water- 
courses are extremely rare — in a quarter of a continent 
there are only three good-sized rivers, and it is in places 
hundreds of miles between brooks. In a word, the country 
seems to have been burnt out — it reminds one of a gigantic 
cinder. 

It is true that there are in this area a great many rivers of 
a sort not to be found in the East — and such strange rivers ! 
They are black as coal, and full of strange, savage waves, and 
cui'ious curling eddies, and enormous bubbles. The springs 
from which they started ran dry centuries ago ; a mouth not 
one of them ever had ; and yet their black flood has not been 
soaked up by the thirsty sands. There lies the broad, wild 
current, sometimes thirty feet higher than its banks, yet not 



THE RIVERS OP STONE. 185 

overflowing them ; a current across which men walk without 
danger of sinking, but not without danger of another sort ; 
a current in which not fishes but wild beasts live — often even 
one river on top of another ! 

You will wonder what sort of rivers these can be. They 
are characteristic of the West — there are none of them in 
the East j but in an area larger than that which holds three- 
fourths of the population of the United States they are a 
part of the country. They line hundreds of valleys. If the 
rest of the landscape suggests fire, they suggest it ten times 
more. And rightly enough, for they have seen fire — nay, 
they have been fire. They are burnt rivers, that ran as fire 
and remain as stone. 

By this time you will have guessed what I mean — that 
these rivers of stone are neither more nor less than lava-flows. 
They are stranger than that African river of ink (made by 
the combination of chemicals soaked from the soil), and in- 
comparably more important, for they have to do with causes 
which much more nearly affect mankind. The gi'eat differ- 
ence between the East and West is that the latter is a vol- 
canic country, while the former is not; and nearly all the 
striking dissimilarities of air, climate, landscape, and even 
customs of the people, arise from this fact. The West has 
been heaved up by the fires within, and burned out and 
parched dry — so dry that even the sky feels it. The rainfall 
is far less than in the East ; and to make their crops grow 
the western farmers have to flood theii' fields several times 
in a season from some stream or reservoir. 



186 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

As we go south this volcanic condition becomes more and 
more predominant. The vast southwest is a strongly vol- 
canic country, and covered with embers of its old fires. 
There are no active volcanoes in the United States, but in the 
southwest there are thousands of extinct ones, each with its 
one to a dozen black rivers of stone. These volcanoes are 
not large peaks like the giants of Central and South Amer- 
ica ; most of them are small cones rising but little above the 
smTounding plains, some not more than fifty feet. Yet so 
elevated is the whole country there that the top of such a 
cone is frequently much higher above the sea-level than the 
summit of Mount Washington. 

Of the many volcanic regions I have explored, one of the 
most interesting is in the Zuiii Mountains of western New 
Mexico, and along their slopes. All through the range — 
whose tops are over eight thousand feet in altitude — are 
scattered scores of extinct volcanoes; and their lava-flows 
have overrun many thousands of square miles. The range 
is covered with a magnificent pine forest — a rare enough 
thing in the southwest — partly growing upon ancient flows, 
and cut in all directions ])y later ones. The soil everywhere 
is sown with jagged fragments of lava, which makes travel 
irksome ; and in the picturesque Zuni canon which traverses 
the range is a singular sight — where the lava, too impatient 
to await outlet by a crater, boiled out in gi-eat waves from 
under the bottom of the caiion^s walls, which are sandstone 
precipices hundreds of feet high. 

The largest crater in this range is about two miles soutli 



THE RIVEES OF STONE. 187 

of the lonely little rancli-house at Agiia Fria. It is a great, 
reddish-brown, truncated cone, rising about five hundred feet 
above the plateau, and from three sides looks very regular 
and round. Around it are the tall pines, and a few have 
even straggled up its sides, as if to see what it all means. 
But they have found it hard climbing, and cling upon its 
precipitous flanks as if disheartened and out of breath. Nor 
can one blame them. To the top of that crater is one of 
the very hardest climbs I know — the ascent of Pike's Peak 
did not tire me nearly so much. The whole cone is covered 
several feet deep with coarse, sharp volcanic ashes, or rather 
cinders — for each fragment is as large as the tip of one's 
finger. The slope is of extreme steepness, and this loose 
covering of scoriae makes ascent almost hopeless. The 
climber sinks caK-deep at every step; and, worse stiU, at 
every step sets the whole face of the slope, for a rod around, 
to shding down-hill. No one can go straight up that ardu- 
ous pitch; one has to climb sidewise and in zigzags, and 
with frequent pauses for breath ; and it is a decided relief, 
mental as well as physical, when one stands at last upon the 
rim of that giant bowl. 

A strange, wild sight it is when we gain the edge of the 
crater. A fairly terrific abyss yawns beneath us ; an abyss 
of dizzy depth and savage grandeur. Its bottom is far lower 
than the level of the country around the outside of the cone 
— from that rim to the bottom of the crater must be eight 
hundred feet. In shape the interior is less like a great bowl 
than a great funnel. The rim is very narrow — in many 



188 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

places not more than six feet across — and terribly rough. 
The rock is cooked to an absolute cinder, and is more 
jagged than anything famihar to the East. Imagine a mill- 
ion tons of rock exactly like one great "clinker" from a 
f lu'nace, and you get some idea of it. Tall, weird cliffs of the 
same roasted rock surround the crater a few hundred feet 
below the rim ; and below these again is the long, swift slope 
of scorioB to the V-shaped bottom. Under the eastern cliff 
is a strange, misplaced little gi'ove of cotton- woods, which 
seem ill enough at ease in that gruesome spot — their roots 
clutching amid the ashy rocks, their tops hundreds of feet 
below the rim. Here and there in the cliffs are "^^dld, dark- 
mouthed caves J and from these long, curious lines lead 
across the slope ^of cinders. They look like tracks across a 
sand-bank — and tracks they are, though one would never 
look for footprints in such a forbidding chasm. But, oddly 
enough, this dead crater is the chosen retreat of more than 
one form of life. There are no other cotton- woods in a gi*eat 
many miles except those I have mentioned — outside the 
crater it is too cold for this shivering tree. And this same 
grim shelter has been chosen by one of the least delicate of 
animals — for those tracks are bear-tracks. Several of these 
big brutes live in the caves of the crater and of the lava-flows 
outside. The Agua Fria region is a great place for bear; 
and at certain times of the year they are an enormous nui- 
sance to the people at the rancho, actually tearing down 
quarters of beef hung against the house, and very nearly 
tearing down the house with the meat. Several have been 



THE RIVERS OF STONE. 189 

killed rigM at the house. A few days before my last visit to 
the crater one of the cowboys, a powerful young Ute Indian, 
was herding the horses near the foot of the cone, when he saw 
a huge black bear scrambling up the acclivity. A good shot 
at nearly five hundred yards brought Bruin rolling to the 
foot of the cone, quite dead. His skin was an imposing sight 
when tacked upon the outside of the log-house to dry, for it 
reached from the ridge-pole to the ground, and then had sev- 
eral inches to spare. Besides the bears, the coyotes, wild-cats, 
and mountain-lions which infest that region, all make their 
homes in the caves of the mal pais or "bad lands," the gen- 
eral name in New Mexico for lava and other volcanic areas. 
It is noticeable that only such animals as these and the dog 
— some creature with cushioned feet — can live or travel in 
the mal pais. Anything with hoofs, like the deer or antelope 
which abound there, or the cattle and sheep wliich also range 
those mountains, cannot long tread those savage-edged rocks. 
The funnel of the crater is not perfect. On the south side 
the huge bowl has lost part of its rim. The crater is about 
seven hundred yards across the top, and nearly three hun- 
dred yards deep j and you may imagine that it was a rather 
warm and weird time when this great caldron was full to 
the brim with hoiling rocli. A terrific potful it must have 
been, and doubly fearful when that stupendous weight burst 
out the side of the pot and poured and roared down the val- 
ley a flood of fire. Think of a lake of lava so heavy that it 
simply tore out a mountain-side eight hundred feet high and 
five hundred feet thick at the bottom ! The break in the 



190 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

crater is in the shape of a huge iiTegular V, nearly a thou- 
sand feet across the top, and over five hundred from top to 
bottom ; and all that great slice of solid rock, weighing mill- 
ions of tons (for it takes only a cubic yard to weigh a ton), 
was knocked out as unceremoniously as though a giant had 
cleft it out with an ax. 

That is the sort of spring in which the rivers of stone had 
their source ; and this particular crater fed many enormous 
streams. Of course it is many centuries since this grim 
spring ran dry ; but we can judge very well how it acted when 
it sent out its strange hot floods. First, above the soughing 
of the pines rose deep, pent-up rumblings, and the solid earth 
rocked and shivered. Then there was a great explosion just 
where that still brown cone stands to-day, and this great wart 
was heaved up from the level plateau, and a vast cloud of 
steam and ashes sprung far into the sky. Then the molten 
flood of rock rose in the great bowl, and brimmed it, and ran 
over in places, and boiled and seethed. And suddenly, with 
a report louder than a hundred cannon, the wall of the crater 
broke, and that resistless deluge of fire rolled like an ava- 
lanche down the valley, plowing a channel fifty feet deep in 
the bed-rock at its outlet, mowing down giant pines as if 
they had been straws, sweeping along enormous boulders like 
driftwood, and spreading death and eternal desolation for 
leagues around. A fiood of any sort is a fearful thing. I 
have seen a wall of water ninety feet high sweep down a nar- 
row pass, at the bursting of a great reservoir at Worcester, 
Mass. It cut off oak-trees two feet in diameter and left 



THE RIVERS OF STONE. 191 

of them only square, splintered stumps. A five-story brick 
building stood in the way, and quicker than you could snap 
a finger it was not. Iron pipes that weighed a thousand 
pounds floated on that mad fiood for a moment ! And what 
must it be when the breaking dam lets out an avalanche of 
molten rock in a wave five hundred feet high ! 

That first outrush must have been a subhme thing. But 
even more than water, a lava stream begins to lose force as 
it gets away from its head. It is so much thicker than water 
at the start, and with every mile it gi^ows thicker still. Soon 
it runs very much like cold molasses ; a sluggish, black, un- 
natural sort of stream, with its middle higher than its sides 
and the sides higher than the banks. The process of cooling 
begins very quickly and goes on rapidly. The " river " runs 
more and more slowly; and along its upper course (if the 
eruption has ceased) a sheU will begin to form witliin a fort- 
night. So here is the strange phenomenon of a river running 
inside a stone conduit of its own making. The shell becomes 
hard enough, long before it is cool enough, to walk upon ; 
and within, the fiery flood still pours along. A great deal of 
gas and steam is imprisoned in the molten flow. Sometimes 
it only makes huge bubbles, whicli remain frozen in the eter- 
nal stone. I have found these bubbles ten feet in diameter 
— curious arched caves, in which a whole party might camp. 
But if the volume of gas be too great, terrific explosions oc- 
cur ; and in places the top of the flow for a hundred acres is 
rent into a million fragments, so sharp-pointed that no crea< 
ture can cross them. 



192 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

The chief river of stone from this crater is about fifty-seven 
miles long, and its black, unmoving flood covers some four 
hundred square miles. It runs south for a few miles from 
the crater, then makes a gi^eat bend to the east, and, passing 
the beautifid rincon* of Cebollita, runs to the northeast nutil 
it unites vnth a smaller flow in the valley of the San Jose. 
In places it is a dozen miles wide, and in some narrow passes 
not more than a mile. At the bend the hot, sluggish current 
actually ran a couple of miles up-hill, in its reluctance to 
turn a corner. 

Not far from this elbow in the stone river is a very inter- 
esting spot. The Pueblo Indians have dwelt for unknown 
ages in that part of New Mexico j and on a fine rock bluff at 
Cebollita is one of the handsomest of their prehistoric ruins 
— a large stone pueblo surrounded by a noble stone wall. 
This fortified town was already deserted and forgotten when 
Coronado came in 1540. The Queres Pueblos have still a 
legend of the Afio de la Litmhrej or "Year of Fire." They 
say their forefathers dwelt in these vaUeys when the lava 
floods came and made it so hot that aU had to move away ; 
and there is a dumb but eternal witness to the truth of their 
story. A few miles from Cebollita were some of their small, 
separate farm-houses in the pretty valley, and thi'ough one of 
these a current of the stone river ran. There stands to this 
day that ancient house, long roofless but with strong walls 
still ; and through a gap in them and over the floor lies the 
frozen black tide. 

There are two islands in this peculiar river, and as peculiar 

* Corner. 



THE RIVERS OF STONE. 193 

as itself. Instead of rising above the flood they are below it 
— lonely parks with gi'ass and stately pines, walled with the 
black lava which stands twenty feet above their level. The 
largest of these parks contains about twenty thousand acres. 
There is a narrow trail into it, and it is used as a pasture for 
the horses of the ninety-seven-thousand-acre A. L. C. ranch. 
There are only two trails by which this lava-flow can be 
crossed by men or horses. Everywhere else it is as much as 
one's life is worth to attempt a passage. No one inexperi- 
enced can conceive of the cruel roughness of these flows. The 
strongest shoes are absolutely cut to pieces in a short w^alk ; 
and then woe to the walker if he have not arrived at more 
merciful ground. Several years ago a band of horse-thieves, 
led by a desperado known as Charlie Ross, were fleeing from 
Gallup with several stolen animals. The ofiicers were close at 
their heels, and to be overtaken meant a swift bullet or a 
long rope. The " rustlers " missed the trail, but tried to cross 
a narrow part of the flow. It was a cruel and indescribable 
passage. They got across and escaped — for the pursuers 
were not so foolhardy as to enter the lava — but on foot. 
Their horses, including a four-hundred-doUar thoroughbred, 
were no longer able to stand. The desperate riders had 
spurred them over that cruel surface until theii' hoofs were 
absolutely gone, and the poor brutes had no feet at all ! The 
robbers themselves came out barefoot, and the rocks were 
marked with their blood. I am glad to remember that the 
pursuers soon got around the mal pais, and put the horses 
out of their misery. 
13 



194 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

This flow runs for several miles beside the track of the 
Atlantic and l^acific Railway, just west of McC'arty, and 
conies to an abrupt end in a pretty little meadow there. 
The small bluish San Jose creek rises in a cold spring which 
pours forth from a cave in the lava, very much like the 
beautiful spring at Agua Fria. The creek e\adently be- 
longed in the valley before the lava came, and despite that 
fearfid invasion of fire it still holds its own. For miles it 
runs through the great black river of stone, now in winding 
channels, and again heard but unseen in long caves under 
the lava. There are also in this part of the flow a dozen or 
more nearly circular basins, some filled with water from the 
brook, and a favorite breeding-place for wild ducks. It is a 
very unsatisfactory place to hunt, however, for your duck is 
very liable to fall into one of the deep, narrow cracks in the 
lava, where he is lost forever. 

The wildest and most interesting part of this stone river is 
up near its head. Everywhere it keeps its old waves and its 
very eddies, frozen into enduring rock ; everywhere it has its 
upheavals and its dangerous fissures. But near the crater 
its surface is inconceivably wild and broken. It seems to 
have gouged out a tremendous channel for itself in its first 
mad rush. For a mile the flow is a succession of " slumps." 
The solid rock beneath seems to have dropped out of sight, 
and when the fiery river cooled it dropped too, but only in 
places. I suppose that reaUy the molten lava all ran out 
from that part of the conduit, and that finally the shell broke 
dowTi in spots. Bnt what a conduit it must have been! 



THE RIVERS OF STONE. 195 

For areas of five acres of this hardest rock, twenty feet thick, 
have simply dropped down and lie at the bottom of a savage 
well seventy-five feet deep ! There are a dozen or more of 
these wild " sink-holes," varying from half an acre in area 
to more than ten times as much ; and they are the most for- 
bidding, desolate, chaotic wrecks imaginable. Most of them 
are inaccessible, for their rock walls are sheer ; but I have 
clambered down into some of them, and in every one which 
could be entered have found the dens of bears and other 
wild beasts. They are safe enough there from molestation 
even by the ubiquitous cowboy, who has to ride everywhere 
else in search of stray cattle. 

In one of these sinks I made a curious discovery in the 
fall of 1891. Perpetual snow is supposed not to exist in the 
southwest. We have several peaks over twelve thousand 
feet high, but that is not a sufficient altitude for eternal 
snow in this arid climate. The spring sun makes short work 
of the drifts, even at the greatest elevations. But here I 
found perpetual snow at an altitude of eight thousand feet, 
in the strangest refrigerator nature ever built. 

It was in the largest of these sinks near the Agua Fria 
crater — a gruesome pit into which I descended with some 
misgivings, in quest of bear, and in company with the Ute 
cowboy. After exploring the various caves in vain, finding 
plenty of traces of bear but no bear, we went clambering over 
the chaos of lava blocks to a great, dark cavity at the head 
of the sink. Here the broken conduit showed plainly. It is 
a huge tunnel, with an arch of nearly fifty feet, and running 



196 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

back under the lava no one knows liow far. In the mouth 
of the tunnel, fully one hundi-ed feet below the surface of the 
liow, is a clear, cold pool of water, walled behind by a bank 
of snow twenty feet in visible thickness. It is flat as a floor 
on top, and sheer as a wall in front, and runs back nearl}^ a 
hundred feet. The successive deposits are clearly marked. In 
the severe winter of those mountains a gi*eat deal of snow 
drifts into the tunnel. In summer this settles and hardens, 
and volcanic ashes blow in and form a thin layer upon it. 
The sun never enters beyond a point about ten feet back of a 
perpendicular from the top of the cliff, and as the cliff forms 
a sort of bay, this mass of snow is touched by the sun in a 
semicircle, and melts so that its face is in the shape of a cres- 
cent. This perpendicular wall of snow twenty feet high is 
very pretty, for, with its bluish strata interlined with the yel- 
low horizontal bands of dust, it looks for all the world Hke a 
huge section of Mexican onyx. It is settled and solidified 
until it is half ice ; but the hottest summer makes no fur- 
ther impression upon it. A strange place for eternal snow, 
truly ; a novel idea in ice-houses — this refrigerator in what 
was once the hottest place in the world ! The contrast is 
noticeable enough, even now. In summer the sun beats 
down into the pit with great fury, and the black rocks ab- 
sorb its heat until a hand can hardly be laid upon them. 
But the instant one steps into the shade of the great arch 
there is a tremendous change in temperature. From being 
nearly broiled one passes in two steps to a chill which can- 
not long be borne. Up under the gloomy rock arch twitter- 



THE RIVERS OF STONE. 197 

ing swallows have their nests, and all the hot day they skim 
about in the mouth of the tunnel, now in sun and now in 
shade. 

Such volcanic ice-houses are sometimes usefid, too. The 
city of Catania in Sicily is supplied with ice from a somewhat 
similar cavern in one of the lava-flows of iEtna. But I do 
not know how the ice-cave of the Zuni Mountains can ever 
be made available, unless, indeed, the resident bears and wild- 
cats should take a notion to drag in a calf or deer and keep 
it in this unique cold-storage warehouse against a possible 
famine. 

Not only are there these stone rivers in so many of the 
valleys, but thousands of the great sandstone mesas (table- 
lands) of New Mexico and Ai-izona are capped with flat lava- 
flows from ten to fifty feet thick. In some places there are 
solitary buttes, one or two hundred feet high, standing alone 
in a plain. Their tops are sohd lava, but there is not another 
sign of a flow for miles around. Those flows were extremely 
ancient, and erosion has cut down all the rest of the lava- 
covered upland and carried it away in sand, lea\^ng only this 
one strange " island'^ in token of what once was. Very fre- 
quently, too, in such a mesa the underlying sandstone is so 
much softer that it has been worn away first, and the harder 
cap of lava projects everywhere like a great, rough cornice. 



XV. 



THE NAVAJO BLANKET. 



NE of the striking cui'iosities of one of our 

Op Strange Corners is the Navajo blanket. There 
M is no other blanket like it. It is remarkable 
that half -naked savages in a remote wilderness 
which is almost a desert, unwashed nomads who 
never live in a house, weave a handsomer, more durable, and 
more valual}le blanket than is tui-ned out by the costly and 
intricate looms of Europe and America ; but it is true. The 
covers which shelter us nights are very poor affairs, artis- 
tically and commercially, compared to those superb fabrics 
woven by Navajo women in the rudest caricature of a loom. 
Blanket-weaving is the one domestic industry of this great 
tribe of twenty thousand souls, whose temporary brush shel- 
ters dot the northwestern mountains of New Mexico and the 
eastern ranges of Arizona ; but they do it well. The work 
of the men is stock-raising — they have a million and a half 
of sheep, a hundred thousand cattle, and several hundi-ed thou- 
sand beautiful ponies — and they also plant a very little corn. 
The women have no housework to do, because they have no 
houses — a very different social condition from that of their 



THE NAVAJO BLANKET. 199 

neiglibors, the cleanly, inclnstrious, farm-tending, home-lov- 
ing Pneblos. They make hardly any pottery, bnying what 
they need from the expert Pueblos, in exchange for their own 
matchless blankets, which the Pneblos no longer weave. 

The Navajo country is a very lonely and not altogether 
safe one, for these Indians are jealous of intruders j but it is 
full of interest, and there is much to be seen in safe prox- 
imity to the raih'oad — particularly near Manuelito, the last 
station in New Mexico. 

It faii'ly takes one's breath away to ride up one of these 
ban-en mesas, among the twisted pinons, and find a ragged 
Indian woman squatted before a loom made of three sticks, 
a rope, and a stone, weaving a blanket of great beauty in de- 
sign and color, and with the durability of iron. But that is 
what one may see a thousand times in this strange territory 
by taking the necessary trouble, though it is a sight that few 
white people do see. The Navajo is a seeker of seclusion, and 
instinctively pitches his camp in an out-of-the-way location. 
You may pass within fifty yards of his liogan and never sus- 
pect the proximity of human life, unless your attention is 
called by one of his wolfish dogs, which are very fond of 
strangers — and strangers rmv. If you can induce the dog to 
save you for supper, and wiU foUow his snarling retreat, this 
is what you may see : 

Under the shelter of a juniper, a semicircular wind-break 
built breast-high of brush, and about fifteen feet from point 
to point ; a tiny heap of smoldering coals ; a few greasy 
sheep-skins and blankets lying against the brush ,• perhaps 



200 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

the jerked meat of a sheep hanging to a branch, and near it 
pendent a few silver ornaments; a bottle-necked basket, 
pitched without and full of cold water; an old Spencer 
carbine or a Winchester leaning against the " wall " ; a few 
bare-legged youngsters of immeasurable mii'th, but diffident 
toward strangers ; mayhap the lord of the castle and a male 
companion or two playing cunquian with solemn faces and 
Mexican cards; the dogs, the lariated ponies — ami the lady 
of the house at her remarkable loom. 

For simplicity of design, the Navajo "loom" — if it can be 
dignified by such a title — is unique. Occasionally the frame 
is made by setting two posts fii'mly in the ground about six 
feet apart, and lashing cross-pieces at top and bottom. So 
complicated an affair as this, however, is not usual. Ordi- 
narily a straight pole is lashed between two trees, at a height 
of five or six feet from the ground. A strong rawhide rope, 
wound loosely round and round this, serves to suspend the 
" supplementary yarn-beam," a straight bar of wood five or 
six feet long. To this in turn is attached a smaller bar, 
around which the upper ends of the stout strings which con- 
stitute the warp are tied. The lowxr ends of these strings 
are tied to a similar bar, which is anchored by stones at a 
distance of about two inches from the ground, thus keeping 
the string taut. And thera is your loom. 

On the ground a foot away squats the weaver, bare-shinned 
and bare-armed, with her legs crossed tailor fashion. The 
warp hangs vertically before her, and she never rises while 
weaving. A stick holds the alternate cords of the warp 



THE NAVAJO BLANKET. 201 

apart in opposite directions, and thus enables her to run the 
successive threads of the woof across without difficulty. As 
soon as a thread has been thus loosely introduced to its 
proper position, she proceeds to ram it down with the tight- 
ness of the charge in a Fourth-of-July cannon by means of a 
long, thin, hard-wood " batten-stick," frequently shaped some- 
thing like an exaggerated bread-knife. It is little wonder 
that that woof will hold water, or stand the trampling of a 
lifetime. Every thread of it is rammed home with a series 
of vicious jabs sufficient to make it " set down and stay sot." 
For each unit of the frequently intricate pattern she has a 
separate skein; and the unhesitating skill with which she 
brings them in at their proper intervals is astonishing. 

Now, by the time her woof has. risen to a point twenty-five 
to thirty inches above the ground, it is evident that some new 
arrangement is essential to her convenience. Does she get 
up and stand to the job ? Not at all. She simply loosens 
the spirally wound rope on the pole above so that its loops 
hang a foot or two lower, thus letting down the supple- 
mentary yarn-beam and the yarn-beam by the same amount. 
She then makes a fold in the loosened web, and tightly sews 
the upper edge of this fold to the cloth-beam below, thus 
making the web taut again. This is the Navajo patent for 
overcoming the lack of our " revolving cloth-bearers." This 
operation is repeated several times before a full-sized blanket 
is completed. The smallest size of saddle blanket can be 
woven without changing the loom at all. 

All Navajo blankets are single ply, the pattern being the 



202 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

same on both sides. I liave seen but two wliicli had on one 
side a different pattern from that on the other. 

The range of qnahty in Navajo blankets is great. The 
common blanket, for bedding and rough wear, is a rude 
thing indeed beside its feast-day brother. These cheap ones, 
almost always of full size — about six by five feet — are made 
of the native wool. The Navajos raise their own sheep, shear 
them, card, twist, and dye the wool. The prevaihng color of 
the blanket is natural — a whitish gray — and through this 
ground run cross-stripes, generally of blue, but sometimes 
of red, black, or yellow. These stripes are mostly in native 
dyes, the blue being now obtained from American indigo. 
They also dye in any color with dyes made by themselves 
from herbs and minerals. These wool blankets requii*e a 
week or so for weaving, and sell at from two dollars and a 
half to eight dollars apiece. They are frequently liaK an 
inch thi(}k, and are the warmest of blankets, their fuzzy 
softness making them much warmer than the higher-priced, 
tighter-woven, and consequently stiffer ones. 

In the second grade of blankets there is an almost endless 
variety. These are now made of Germantown yarn, which 
the Navajos buy in big skeins at the various stores and trad- 
ing-posts along the line of the Atlantic and Pacific Railway, 
which passes some twenty-five miles south of the whole line 
of their reservation. And remarkably fine blankets they 
make of it. Their abiUty as hiventors of neat designs is 
truly remarkable. The cheap blankets are very much of a 
piece j but when you come up into patterns, it w^ould be 



THE NAVAJO BLANKET. 203 

difficult to find in the whole territory two blankets exactly 
ahke. The designs are ingenious, characteristic, and admira- 
bly worked out. Sometimes the weaver traces the pattern on 
the sand before beginning her blanket, but as a rule she 
composes it in her head as the work progresses. Cii'cles or 
curved lines are never used in these blankets. The prevail- 
ing patterns are straight stripes, diagonals, regular zigzags, 
diamonds and crosses — the latter being to the Indians em- 
blems of the morning or evening star. 

The colors used are limited in number. Scarlet is the 
favorite red, and indigo almost the only blue in use. These 
and the white of the bleached wool are the original colors, 
and the only ones which appear in the very best blankets. 
It is cui'ious that these savages should have chosen our own 
" red, white, and blue " long before we did-— they were weav- 
ing already before the first European ever saw America. The 
Spanish conquerors brought the first sheep to the New World, 
and soon gave these valuable animals to the Pueblo Indians. 
So wool came into New Mexico and displaced the Indian cot- 
ton, and the Navajos quickly adopted the new material. 

But of late there has been a sad deterioration in Navajo 
weaving— the Indians have learned one of the mean lessons 
of civilization, and now make their blankets less to wear 
than to seU. So an abominable combination of colors has 
crept in, until it is very difficult longer to get a blanket with 
only the real Indian hues. Black, green, and yellow are 
sometimes found in superb blankets, and so combined as not 
to lessen their value ; but as a rule these colors are to be 



204 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

avoided. But now some weavers use colors which to an In- 
dian are actually accursed — like violet, purple, dark brown, 
etc., the colors of witchcraft — and such blankets are worth- 
less to collectors. With any Indian, color is a matter of 
religion, and red is the most sacred of hues. The amount 
of it in a blanket largely determines the price. An amusing 
instance of the Navajo devotion to red was brought to my 
notice some years ago. A post trader had received a ship- 
ment of prepared coffee, half in red papers and half in blue. 
In a month every red package was gone, and every blue 
package was left on the shelves; nor would the Indians 
accept the blue even then until long waiting convinced them 
that there was no present prospect of getting any more red. 

The largest of these Germantown-yarn blankets take sev- 
eral weeks to weave, and are worth from fifteen to fifty 
doUars. 

The very highest grade of Navajo blanket is now very rare. 
It is a dozen years since one of them has been made; the 
yarn blankets, which are far less expensive and sell just as 
well to the ignorant traveler, have entirely supplanted them. 
Only a few of the precious old ones remain — a few in the 
hands of wealthy Pueblo Indians and Mexicans — and they 
are almost priceless. I know every such blanket in the south- 
west, and, outside of one or two private collections, the speci- 
mens can be counted on one's fingers. The colors of these 
choicest blankets are red, white, and blue, or, rarely, just red 
and white. In a very few specimens there is also a little 
black. Red is very much the prevailing color, and takes up 



THE NAVAJO BLANKET. 205 

sometimes four-fifths of the blanket, the other colors merely 
drawing the pattern on a red ground. 

This red material is from a fine Tm-kish woolen cloth, 
called Idlleta. It used to be imported to Mexico, whence the 
Navajos procured it at first. Later, it was sold at some of 
the trading-posts in this territory. The fixed price of it was 
six dollars a pound. The Navajos used to ravel this cloth 
and use the thread for their finest blankets; and it made 
such blankets as never have been produced elsew^here. Theii* 
dui-ability is wonderful. They never fade, no matter how^ 
frequently washed — an operation in which amole, the sapo- 
naceous root of the palmillaj should be substituted for soap. 
As for wear, I have seen balleta blankets which have been 
used for rugs on the floors of populous Mexican houses for 
fifty years, which still retain their brilliant color, and show 
serious wear only at their broken edges. And they mil hold 
water as well as canvas T\dll. 

A balleta blanket like that shown in the frontispiece is 
worth two hundi'ed dollars, and not a dozen of them could 
be bought at any price. It is seventy-three inches long by 
fifty-six inches wide, and weighs six pounds. You can easily 
reckon that the thread in it cost sometliing, at six dollars a 
pound, and the weaving occupied a Navajo woman for many 
months. It is hardly thicker than the cover of this book, 
and is almost as firm. It is too thin and stiff to be an ideal 
bed-blanket, and it was never meant to be one. All blankets 
of that quality were made to be worn upon the shoulders 
of chiefs; and most of them were ponchos — that is, they 



206 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

had a small slit left in the center for the wearer to put his 
head through, so that the blanket would hang upon him 
like a cape. Thus it was combined overcoat, waterproof, and 
adornment. I bought this specimen, after weeks of diplo- 
macy, from Martin del Valle, the noble-faced old Indian who 
has been many times governor of the cliff -built "city" of 
Acoma. He bought it twenty years ago from a Navajo war- 
chief for a lot of ponies and turquoise. He has used it ever 
since, but it is as brilliant, and apparently as strong, as the 
day it was finished. 

These finest blankets are seldom used or shown except 
upon festal occasions, such as councils, dances, and races. 
They are then brought forth with all the silver and beaded 
buckskin, and in a large crowd of Indians make a truly start- 
ling display. Some wear them the middle girt around the 
waist by a l)elt of heavy silver disks, the lower end falling 
below the knees, the upper end thrown loosely over the 
shoulders. Others have them thrown across the saddle, and 
others tie them in an ostentatious roU behind. 

The Navajos and Pueblos also weave remarkably fine and 
beautiful belts and garters, from two to eight inches wide 
and two to nine feet long ; and durable and pretty dresses 
for their women. 

The loom for weaving one of the handsome belts worn by 
Pueblo women is quite as simple as that of the Navajos for 
weaving blankets. One end of the warp is fastened to a stake 
driven into the ground in front of the weaver, the other to a 
rod held in place by a strap around her waist ; so to tighten 



THE NAVAJO BLANKET. 207 

the warp she has only to sit back a little. The device for 
separating the alternate threads of the warp so that the shut- 
tle can be pushed through looks like a small rolling-pin ; and 
in the weaver's right hand is the oak batten-stick for ramming 
the threads of the woof tightly together. The weaver sits 
flat upon the ground ; generally upon a blanket to keep her 
manta clean, for the di-ess of a Pueblo woman is neat, hand- 
some, and expensive. These belts are always two-ply, that is, 
the pattern on one side is different from that on the other. 

It may also be news to you to learn that both Navajos and 
Pueblos are admirable silversmiths, and make all their own 
jewehy. Theii' silver rings, bracelets, earrings, buttons, belts, 
dress pins, and bridle ornaments are very well fashioned with 
a few rude tools. The Navajo smith works on a flat stone 
under a tree ; but the Pueblo artificer has generally a bench 
and a little forge in a room of his house. 



XVI. 



THE BT.IND HUNTERS. 




|N these Strange Corners a great many things seem 
to be exactly reversed from what we are accus- 
tomed to. For instance, with us "a hunter's 
eye " is a synonym for perfect sight, and we 
fancy that if any one in the world needs good 
vision it is he who follows the chase. But in the quaint 
southwest the most important hunters — and, in the belief 
of thousands of the natives, the most successful ones — can- 
not see at all ! They are stone-blind, wliich is not so out of 
keeping, after all, since they themselves are stones ! Very 
pretty stones are these famous little Nimrods — snowy quartz, 
or brilliant agate, or jasper, or a peculiar striped spar which 
is found in some parts of New Mexico. That is their body. 
Then their eyes are of coral, or blue turquoise from the pre- 
historic mines in Mount Chalchuhuitl near Santa Fe; and 
theii" hearts are always of turquoise, which is the most pre- 
cious thing known to the aborigines of the southwest, for it 
is the stone which stole its color from the sky. 

" But how can a blind stone with a turquoise heart be a 
hunter ? " you ask. Well, that depends on the locality. I do 



THE BLIND HUNTERS. 209 

not imagine he wonld count for mnch in a Queen's County 
fox-chase, but out here he can be a hunter veiy well. Here 
he is the very king of hunters 5 and no party of Indians 
would think for an instant of going out for deer or antelope, 
or even rabbits, except under Ms leadership and with his aid. 

These stone hunters are the hunt-fetiches of the Indians. 
They are tiny images of the most successful animals of prey — 
like the cougar, bear, eagle, and wolf — rudely carved from the 
hardest stone into a clumsy but unmistakable likeness. The 
image alone is not enough. An arrow-head of agate or vol- 
canic glass is always bound with sinew to its right side, and 
under the turquoise heart is always a pinch of the sacred 
corn-meal. These little stone statues are supposed to com- 
municate to those who carry them aU the hunter-craft of the 
animal which they represent. Every Indian carries a fetich 
when he hunts, and derives its power from it by putting its 
mouth to his own and drawing in his breath — "di'inking 
the breath " of the image. This ceremony is indispensable 
at the beginning of a hunt, and at various stages of its 
progi'ess. The favorite hunt-fetich among the Pueblos is 
the mountain-hon or cougar, Jceem-ee-deJi, which they deem 
the king of animals. 

The hunter, when he strikes a trail, takes a forked twig and 
places it in front of a footprint, ^\dth the fork opening back- 
ward. This is to trip the fleeing game. Then he draws from 
his "left-hand bag" (the shoulder-pouch which serves the In- 
dian for a pocket) his fetich, inhales its " breath of strength,'^ 
and prays to it — or rather to the animal spirit it represents 
14 



210 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

— to help liim ; and then, before following the trail, imitates 
the roar of his patron-beast, to terrify and bewilder the game. 
He firmly believes that without these superstitious ceremo- 
nials he would stand no chance at all in the hunt, but that 
with them he is sure to succeed. 

It is difficult for us to realize the importance which the 
Indian attaches to all matters connected with game. We are 
at a point in civilization where such things concern us only 
as pastimes, but to the Indian the hunt is still the corner- 
stone of life, or has been until so recently that he has not 
lost the old feeling. A matter so vital to the human race — 
in his eyes — has become the nucleus for a vast quantity of 
his most sacred beliefs. The animals which are successful 
hunters are objects of reverence, and he is careful to invoke 
their aid, that his own pursuit may be as fortunate as theirs. 
Indeed, the whole process of hunting is involved in an enor- 
mous amount of religious ^^ red-tape" — for you must remem- 
ber that the Indian never does anytliing simply '^for fun." 
He enjoys many things ; but he does them not for enjoyment, 
but for a superstitious end. 

Even my neighbors, the Pueblos, who have been farmers 
and irrigators for unknown centuries, preserve almost un- 
abated their ancient traditions and usages of the chase, and 
a hunt of any sort is a very rehgious affau', whether it be a 
simple foray of two or three men, or one of the great com- 
munal hunts in which many hundreds are engaged. One of 
their chief l^ranches of medicine-men are those w^ho have ab- 
solute control of all matters pertaining to game. Tliese are 



THE BLIND HUNTERS. 211 

named, in the language of tlie Tigua Pueblos, the Hoo-mah- 
Jioon ("those who have death in their arms"). According to 
their folk-lore the Hoo-mah-koon were created just after man- 
kind emerged from the bowels of the earth, and were the 
first of all branches of medicine, except only the Kdh-pee-oo- 
nin ("those who are dying of cold," in allusion to the almost 
nakedness in which they always make their official appear- 
ance), who broke through the crust of the earth and led their 
people out to the light. 

In the sacred songs of the Hoo-mah-koon of the Pueblo of 
Isleta, where I lived for four years, it is declared that they 
came here first from the town of the Wolf's Den, one of the 
picturesque ruins in the great plains east of the Manzano 
Mountains. The order in Isleta numbers seven men. Be- 
ginning in May of every year there is always a series of com- 
munal rabbit hunts, one a week for seven weeks. The first 
of these hunts is under the command of the senior Hoo-mah- 
koo-ee-deh (the singular of Hoo-mah-koon), the second hunt 
under the next in rank, and so on until each of the captains 
of the hunt has had a day in the order of his seniority. 

The official crier of the village announces the night before 
that on the morrow will be JSI'aJi-M-ah-shti (the round-hunt), 
in stentorian tones which none but the deaf can fail to hear. 
That evening the Hoo-mah-koon and other dignitaries hold 
N'dh-ivheh (the di^awing-dance), to charm the game. The danc- 
ing and singing are supposed (though conducted in a house) 
to reach and fascinate the ears of all wild animals, so that 
they cannot hear the approach of the hunter on the mor- 



212 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

row ; and in the intervals of the dance all who are present 
smoke vigorously the iveeVj or sacred cigarette, whose clouds 
blind the eyes of the game and make them less watchful. 
The songs sung at the di'awing-dance vary according to the 
game to be hunted next day, and always begin with a refrain 
that has no meaning, but is an imitation of the cry of that 
animal. Before the gi'eat fall round-hunt for deer and ante- 
lope, the song is one which may be translated as follows : 

HUNTING SONG. 

Beh-eh eh-k'hay-roh, 

Beh-eh eh-k'hay-roh, 

Beh-eh eh-k'hay-roh. 

I am the mountain-lion young man, 

I am the mountain-lion young man, 

I am the mountain-lion young man, 

Antelope thigh in my house hangs plenty, 

Antelope shoulder in my house hangs plenty, 

Antelope heart in my house hangs plenty, 

I am the mountain-lion young man. 

Deer head in my house hangs plenty, 

Deer liver in my house hangs plenty, 

All deer meat in my house hangs plenty, 

I am the mountain-lion young man. 

The dance and other services last most of the night. At 
the appointed time in the morning the Hoo-mah-koon repair 
to a certain sand-hill on the edge of the plains, about two 
miles from the pueblo, the invariable starting-point for all 
hunts to the westward, and thither follow several hundred of 
the men and grown boys of the village. At a certain sacred 
spot the chief of the Hoo-mah-koon starts a small fire with 
the most impressive ceremonies, singing meanwhile a chant 



THE BLIND HUNTERS. 213 

wliich relates how fii'e was fii'st discovered and how transmit- 
ted — both of which important deeds are credited to the Hoo- 
mah-koon. None ontside that order — not even a member 
of one of the other branches of medicine-men — dare make 
that fire, and the chief H6o-mah-koo-ee-deh must light it 
only in the sacred way, namely, with the ancient fire-drill or 
Tvdth flint and steel. He would expect to be struck dead if 
he were to kindle it with the impious, new-fangled matches, 
which are now used by the Pueblos for all common uses, but 
must not enter any sacred ceremony whatever. 

When the holy fii-e is well under way the Hoo-mah-koon 
stand around it with bowed heads, invoke the fetiches, and 
pray to Those Above to bless the hunt. Then their chief 
selects two men to lead the hunt, puts them in front of 
all the crowd, instructs them where to close the circle, and 
pushes them apart with the command " Go ! " These two 
start running in divergent lines. In a moment two more 
are started after them, and two more, and so on until all the 
hundreds of hunters are in motion along two files like the 
arms of a V, the knot of Hoo-mah-koon forming the apex. 
The two leaders run on for a designated distance, all the time 
getting farther apart, and then begin to converge toward one 
another until they meet at the appointed spot, frequently a 
couple of miles from the starting-point. Meeting, they hold 
their clubs in the right hand, pass each other on the same 
side and make cross-lines on the ground, by which they stand. 

By this time a cordon of hunters in the shape of an ellipse 
has been formed by their followers, and now at the signal 



214 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

from the Hoo-mali-koon the cordon begins to shrink inward, 
the old men smoking continnally to keep the game blinded. 
The hnnters are armed only with boomerangs, which they 
hurl with force and precision that are simply marvelous. 
Very Uttle game that has been siuTounded thus ever escapes, 
even to the swift- winged quail. A dozen or more of these big 
sm-rounds are made in the course of the day, and all the 
game that is killed in the first two goes to the Hoo-mah-koo- 
ee-deh who is in command for that day. The Hoo-mah-koon 
get their pecuUar name from the fact that as soon as an 
animal is killed they sit down and hug it upon their laps, 
sprinkling it with the sacred meal. 

In the evening, when the successful hunters return to the 
pueblo, heavily laden with game, they proceed to the house 
of the cacique (the chief religious official) and sing before it 
the following song, unchanged from the days when they 
hunted the lordliest game on the American continent : 

SONG AFTER THE HUNT. 

Ah, ee-yali, ee-yah, hay h'yah-ee-ah, 
Ah, ee-yah, ee-yah, hay h'yali-ee-ah, 
Ah, ee-yah, ee-yah, hay h'yah-ee-ah. 
Yonder in the wee-ow-weew-bahn, 

[In Indian Territory] 
There stays the buffalo, 
Commander of beasts, 
Him we are driving 
Hither from yonder, 
With him as prey 
We are arriving, 
With him as prey 
Now we come in. 



THE BLIND HUNTERS. 215 

As the last line is sung, some of the hunters enter the 
house of the cacique, bearing a present of game. 

His own share each hunter carries to his home, and when 
the animal is cooked its head is invariably given to him who 
kills it. By eating this the hunter is supposed to acquire 
something from the animal itself which will make him suc- 
cessful in kilhng others of its kind. The Pueblos have a 
curious custom concerning rabbits, which are now more nu- 
merous than any other game, hundreds being killed in every 
round-hunt on the plain. They will not, under any circum- 
stances, fry them, nor touch one which has been thus cooked. 
The only way in which a True Believer will prepare rabbit is 
to " make it as people.'^ The animal is skinned and drawn. 
Then its long ears are twisted into a knot on top of its head ; 
the fore-legs are twisted so that their ankles are under the 
"arm-pits," and the hind legs are crossed and pinned be- 
hind the back. Why this extraordinary distortion should be 
deemed to make poor bunny look " like people," I have never 
been able to learn ; nor yet the cause for this custom, except 
that it was given them " by those of old," and that the Trues 
order it to be continued. After it has been trussed up in 
this shape the rabbit is roasted in one of the quaint adobe 
out-door ovens, or stewed whole in a big earthen jar with 
home-ground corn-meal. 

No private party ever thinks of starting on a hunting trip 
without first securing the intercession of the Hoo-mah-koon 
with Those Above for their success and safety. When a 
number of men decide to go on a hunt, or on any other jour- 



21 G SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

ney, they meet and select the wisest among them to go to 
the Hoo-mah-koon and ask them to "give the road." The am- 
bassador chosen for this important and honorable mission 
at once bids his wife, mother, or sister to prepare the sacred 
meal, without which no such request would dare be made of 
the medicine-men. She selects and grinds the white or yel- 
low corn to meal, and wi^aps it in the ceremonial corn-husk 
wrapper ; and the ambassador thus equipped goes with his 
request to the chief Hoo-mah-koo-ee-deh. The medicine-man 
takes the sacred meal with his right hand and holds it all the 
time the ambassador is present, and names the night when 
he will come to a designated house (that of one of the party), 
foretell the fortunes of their journey, and "give the road." 

After eight o'clock on the appointed night, which is almost 
invariably the one before the hunters are to start, all the 
Hoo-mah-koon gather at that house, where the hunters are 
present with such of their friends as desire to be benefited. 
The Hoo-mah-koon go through the usual jugglery of a medi- 
cine-dance, and then proceed to forecast the proposed jour- 
ney, taking their omens in any number of ways, somewhat 
after the fashion of the soothsayers of ancient Greece and 
Rome. In one case in my knowledge a prominent Indian 
here was going to travel horseback several hundred miles to 
trade with the Mescalero Apaches. The chief Hoo-mah-koo- 
ee-deh went out and combed the horse that was to be ridden, 
and retm-ned with the combings, which he began to sort over 
with great solemnity. At last he handed to the traveler a 
lot of light hairs with one dark one among them, and said : 



THE BLIND HUNTERS. 217 

" You are on your way to break the rifle you carry, for the 
horse will fall and throw you as you go down a hill. And 
you will trade the broken rifle for this dark horse/' pointing 
to the one dark hair. The traveler, who is a very reliable 
Indian, and who made one of the best governors the pueblo 
ever had, vows that it befell exactly so. His horse threw 
him, the rifle was broken in the fall, and he traded it for a 
horse the very color of that hair! Who could ask more 
convincing proof that the medicine-man had indeed "the 
power"? 

After the fortunes of the journey have been thus fore- 
told all present join in the following chant. At the words 
" Hither ! Hither ! '' those who are to travel draw their hands 
toward them repeatedly, and the others perform a similar in- 
cantation with their breath. This is intended to " draw to " 
the traveler the game or other object of his journey. 

SONG BEFORE THE JOURNEY. 

Hither! Hither! 
This way ! This way I 
[Pointing in the direction to be taken.] 
Life for-the-sake-of, 
Health for-the-sake-of, 
Our children for-the-sake-of, 
Our animals for-the-sake-of. 
Game for-the-sake-of, 
Clothing f or-the-sake of. 
Thus with empty hands 
Thus we go out. 

As the last two lines are sung all brush their left palms 
with their right. After this song the Hoo-mah-koon pray to 



218 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

the Trues to bless the journey, and then ^' give the road" — 
that is, their official permission to start. 

The Pueblos have, by the way, a '' coyote telegraph,'^ which 
is used in hunts, and used to be in war, by which they can 
impart news or commands several mUes by yells which are a 
perfect imitation of the coyote Any one who had not learned 
the " code " would imagine it merely the usual concert of the 
cowardly little wolves of the praii'ie. The cry of the genuine 
coyote, too, is always a significant omen to the Pueblo. One 
short, sharp bark is a token of impending danger, and any 
party that hears that warning will at once turn back, no 
matter how important its mission. Two short cries close to- 
gether mean that some one is dead in the village. Tlu-ee 
short successive yelps, followed by the long wail, is under- 
stood as sure proof that the principals of the town have tried 
some person accused of witchcraft and have found a verdict 
of guilty J and so on. 



XVII. 



FINISHING AN INDIAN BOY. 




MONG the countless oddities of custom which 
prevail in the southwest, perhaps none would 
strike my young countrymen as odder than 
the graduating exercises of a Pueblo lad. It 
is certainly a very different sort of graduation 
from any known to eastern schools ; and I fear a great many 
of our bright pupils would fail to pass to the satisfaction 
of the examiners. 

Among all Indian tribes there is a much more thorough 
course of home education than we generally imagine. Any 
observant man, if he be half as intelligent as the average 
Indian, cannot watch the latter without feeling that this 
brown fellow has a remarkable scholarship of the senses. The 
education of eye and ear, and of the perceptive faculties, is 
nothing short of marvelous to us, who have not left of any 
of these senses a tithe of the acuteness Nature meant us to 
have. But if the observer can get " on the inside of things " 
and reaUy understand Indian life, he finds a much more re- 
markable education in the strange lore of a strange people. 



220 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

Such memories are hardly ever found among " civilized*' 
people as are common to those who have no books nor 
writing to remember for them; and it takes such marvelous 
memories to retain all that the member of Indian society 
must carry in his head. I have found the study of the train- 
ing of my young Pueblo neighbors very interesting. 

The girls are taught little beyond their duties as home- 
makers and home-keepers — which is a considerable education 
in itself, for the Pueblo woman is a very good housewife. 
But the boys all go through a very serious and arduous train- 
ing to fit them for the responsibilities of Indian manhood. 
Every lad is expected to become an athlete of agility and en- 
durance, to be expert in war and the hunt, to know and keep 
word for word the endless stories which embody the customs 
and laws of his people, and to be educated in many other 
ways. His training begins as soon as he can talk and be 
talked to ; and it continues, in greater or less degree, as long 
as he hves. As for the lad who is elected to follow the unat- 
tractive hfe of a medicine-man, he has before hhn one long 
curriculum of toil. In all Indian tribes the shamans or 
medicine-men are the most important personages — the real 
"power behind the throne," no matter what the outward 
form of government. Upon them depends the success of the 
farmer, the hunter, the waiTior ; they have to keep witches 
from swooping off the people, to give proper welcome to new- 
comers to this world, to cure the sick, and give safeguard 
to the departed on their long journey to the Other Country. 
Besides the extremely numerous societies of medicine-men. 



FINISHING AN INDIAN BOY. 221 

there are many other secret orders among the Pueblos ; and 
initiation into one or more of these is part of the education 
of the young Indian boy. 

Some time ago a bright young neighbor and friend of 
mine, then twelve years old, was received into the important 
order of the Cum-pa-huit-la-wen — who are a sort of police 
against witches and armed guards of the Fathers of Medicine. 
In his infancy Refugio had been sickly, and to induce the 
Trues to spare his life his parents had "given" him to the 
gray-headed chief of the Cum-pa-huit-la-wen. This old sha- 
man thus became Refugio's " medicine-father," and used to 
visit him regularly — for the boy continued to live with his 
real parents. This giving for adoption into an order or into 
another clan is common among the Pueblos. It does not at 
all break up the home ties, but merely gives the boy an extra 
godfather as it were. The first day after the adoption, the 
old shaman came in person, inquired as to the boy's health, 
held him awhile in his arms, prayed for him, and went away. 
Next day the second in authority of the Cum-pa-huit-la-wen 
called and did likewise; the third day, the thii'd in rank; 
and so on until every member of the order had made his 
ceremonial visit. Then the chief shaman began again, and 
after him day by day came his medicine-brothers in the order 
of their rank. These formal visits had been kept up daily, 
through all these years, with absolute punctuality, until Re- 
fugio was deemed old enough to become a full member of 
the lodge into which he had been adopted. All this time, of 
course, he had been under the general tuition of the order ; 



222 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

and his "brothers" had given him a general education — but 
had not intrusted him with their special secrets. 

When at last his initiation was decided upon, he was made 
to keep a solemn fast for twenty-four hours. Then, after 
undown, he was led by his medicine-father to the medicine - 
house, where the whole order of Cum-pa-huit-la-wen were 
already assembled. 

Removing their moccasins at the door, the old cliief and 
the lad entered the low, dark room — lighted only by the 
sacred fii'e, whose flickering embers flung ghostly shadows 
across the dark rafters — and stood before the solemn semi- 
circle of squatting men. Standing there with bowed head, 
the medicine-father prayed to the Trues of the East, the 
Trues of the North, the Trues of the West, the Trues of the 
South, the Trues Above and the Trues Here-in-the-Center. 
So punctilious is Pueblo superstition that it would be deemed 
an infamy to address their six cardinal points in any other 
order. Only a witch would ever think of naming first North, 
then West, South, etc. Having thus invoked the blessing of 
all the deities, the old man took the trembling lad by the 
hand and said to his fellows : " Brothers, friends, this is my 
son. From now, he is to take our road. Receive him and 
teach him in the ways of the Cum-pa-huit-la-wen." 

"It is well," repUed the others. ^^Ah-lilai! Sit down on 
what ye have." 

The old man and Refugio placed theu^ moccasins and 
shoulder-blankets upon the bare adobe floor, and seated 



FINISHING AN INDIAN BOY. 223 

themselves thereon. It would be an unheard-of sacrilege for 
an Indian to occupy a chair or bench upon any such sacred 
occasion. He must sit only " upon what he has" — and if it 
be summer, when no blanket is worn, his moccasins are his 
only seat. 

Then the chief shaman's fii^st assistant — had the boy been 
adopted by any of the others, the chief himself would have 
officiated now — prepared and handed them the iveeVj or 
sacred cigarette. The ordinary cigarette of tobacco rolled 
in a bit of corn-husk or brown paper, which is commonly 
smoked for pleasure, is never used in a reUgious ceremony. 
The iveer can be lighted only at the sacred fire ; and having 
kindled his at the coals, Refugio began to puff slowly, as he 
had been'directed. This smoke-trying is always the first duty 
of a candidate, and it is no mean test of the earnestness of his 
desire to " take the road." He must smoke the weer down to 
its last whiff and inhale every particle of smoke, not a sus- 
picion of which must escape from his mouth. The first three 
or four whiffs almost invariably make him deathly sick, but 
it is very rarely indeed that he fails to smoke to the end. In 
almost all folk-stories wherein the hero goes into the pres- 
ence of the Trues for any assistance — a very common part 
of the plot of these myths — he is tried with the iveer first, to 
see if he be enough of a man for it to be worth the while 
of the Trues to attend to his case. Sometimes the trial of 
his faith is long-drawn and harrowing in its severity, but 
it always begins with the smoke test. 



224 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

Refugio did bravely. Very soon the soft olive of his young 
face tiu'ned gray ; but he puffed away impassively at the pun- 
gent reed until he had finished the last whiff. 

^^ Ah-fit-mee-hee ! He wins his coui'se ! " said the fii'st as- 
sistant shaman. Then, with prayers by all, the cleansing 
with warm water was given Refugio, and he was bidden to 
stand erect, while the master of ceremonies said encourag- 
ingly : "So far, you show that you will follow oiu' road." 

Standing, now, the lad was ordered to make a prayer to 
all the Trues — no small task, since their number is legion 
and they must be addressed only in the proper order of their 
rank. "Wlienever Refugio stumbled or was at a loss, the first 
assistant prompted him ; and he had to go over and over 
that enormous list until he knew it perfectly. 

Now he was made to sit down upon his moccasins, with 
his knees drawn up under his chin, to learn the songs of 
the order — which are of great number. He began with 
the great song to T'hoo-ree-deh, the Sun-Father — which he 
learned in less than haK the time it afterward took me to 
master it. It is a very important and impressive song, and 
is sung by the Cum-pa-huit-la-wen whenever they escort the 
cacique to a great ceremony. A translation of it is as f oUows 
(leaving out the many repetitions and meaningless refrains) : 

THE SONG OF THE SUN. 

O Sun, our Father, 

Sun-Man, 

Sun-Commander, 

Father, a prayer-stick we tie. 



FINISHING AN INDIAN BOY. 225 

Father, ou the road stand ready ; 
Father, take your way ; 
Father, arrive ; 
Father, come in ; 
Father, be seated. 

The learning of all those songs was a serious matter, and 
Refugio mastered only a few that night. The next day at 
sundown — after another fast — he resumed his labors, and 
so on every night until he had all the songs by heart. After 
the last one was learned came the ceremony of Tho-a-shiir, the 
Receiving. The boy stood with bowed head in the center of 
the room, while the master of ceremonies gave him the cere- 
monial embrace — putting his right arm over Refugio's left 
shoidder, and his left arm under Refugio's right — and prayed 
that all the Trues would bless the new Cum-23a-huit-la-wid- 
deh. Then Refugio was embraced in turn by his medicine- 
father and all the other members, and was given to drink of 
Fhili-cuin-iy'ali, the Sacred Water — a secret mixture which 
has a SAveet smell but no taste. 

Now came the last severe test of Refugio's faith. He was 
seated, no longer in front of, but in, the semicu'cle of Cum- 
pa-huit-la-wen, who sat solemnly with their official bows and 
arrows in their hands. For all secular purposes the Indians 
now use the latest and best fii'e-arms ; but only bows and 
arrows can be admitted to religious ceremonials. The oldest 
member of the lodge began to recite the history and customs 
of the Cum-pa-huit-la-wen, from the very beginning, when 
mankind came out from the Black Lake of Tears, down to 
the present day. ¥ or forty-nine Jiours this recital was con- 
15 



226 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

tinned witliont rest, the elder shamans taking tnrns in tell- 
ing ; and all that weary time the boy had to keep awake and 
intent, answering at the proper points " Tah-hoon-nam — is 
that so ? " Once, when he nodded, the nearest man gave him 
a sharp punch in the ribs with the end of his bow. 

When Refugio had passed this last ordeal with credit, he 
was again embraced, and tlie official announcement was made 
that he was now a full Cum-pa-huit-la-wid-deh. Had he 
failed in any of these tests — so hard upon the endurance of 
a young boy — he would have been told to "take the heart 
of a man" (be brave) and try again; and the second trial 
would have been given him in a few days. The neophyte's 
struggles with his sickness and sleepiness are sometimes very 
comical; but the men never smile at him — indeed, their 
treatment of him is invariably very kind, as is their conduct 
toward children under all circumstances. 

Refugio was now technically "finished" or graduated, but 
his tasks were by no means done. He has before him a life- 
time of hard and patient study, infinite practice, and fre- 
quent seK-denial. To acquire that marvelous legerdemain 
which gives the medicine-men their chief prestige is a matter 
of years of persevering practice. He will have, too, to go 
through innumerable fasts — some of them for as long as 
eight days — and many other mortifications of the flesh. The 
life of a medicine-man is as far as possible from an easy one. 
The responsibility for the welfare of the whole pueblo — here 
nearly twelve hundred souls — rests upon his shoulders; and 
at the cost of his own comfort and health he must secure 



FINISHING AN INDIAN BOY. 227 

blessings for his people and avert all ill from them. His 
rewards are very few, and entirely disproportionate, except 
the nniversal respect which he commands. 

Refugio, by the way, has now earned the proud privilege 
of smoking. He often comes to me for the wherewithal to 
roll the little brown cigarettes of the country in his slender 
fingers. How rare a privilege this is for so young a boy, 
under the rigid Pueblo etiquette, you will understand better 
when I have told you something about their notions on the 
subject of smoking. 



XVIII. 



THE PRAYING SMOKE. 




I HE use of the pipe of peace by the Indians of 
the East, who have disappeared before the el- 
bowing of our ancestors the earth-hungry, is 
f aniiUar to every reader ; but few are aware how 
widespread is stiU the importance of smoking 
among the surviving tribes of the continent. In the south- 
west, where the Indian has held his own since the more mer- 
ciful Spanish conquest — for the real history of later days 
proves that the Spaniards were not the merciless brutes they 
were so long termed — the calumet had never any real place, 
though a few stone pipes have been found here. The cigar- 
ette is the official form of the weed, and its importance is 
surprising. In religion, in war, in the chase, and in society 
it occupies a highly responsible position. It is more to the 
Indian than is salt to the Arab — equal as a hospitable bond, 
and extending to countless other uses to which the Ai'abian 
salt is never promoted. 

I should not wish to be understood as saying these things 
of the abominable little white cyHnders famiUar to the East. 
Neither Indian nor Mexican has quite -fallen to those. The 



THE PRAYING SMOKE. 229 

cigarro of the southwest is not a pestilence. Its component 
parts are a pinch of granulated tobacco, a bit of sweet-corn 
husk, or (specially made) brown paper and a twist of the 
wrist. 

In my studies in New Mexico I have been much interested 
in the sacred smoke. It recurs everywhere. There is hardly 
a folk-story among the Pueblo Indians in which it does not 
figure prominently. Not a prayer is offered nor a ceremonial 
conducted without its aid. But for it the land would be 
bui'ued up with drought, and the population harpied away 
bodily by evil spirits. No one thinks of being born or dying 
without the intervention of the cigarette, and to aU the in- 
termediate phases of life it is equally indispensable. And as 
befits so vital an article of faith, it is surrounded by rigid 
restrictions. Thus much is common also to the Mexican 
population. A Mexican boy would as soon think of putting 
his head in the fire as of smoking before his parents, if he 
dared smoke at aU — which is very seldom. Many a time on 
a weary march I have offered the bit of corn-husk and the 
pinch of tobacco to an old man, who accepted gratefully, and 
another to his grown-up son, who politely but firmly declined, 
though I could see he was dying for a smoke ; and he would 
deny himself till night, when he could sneak off up the canon 
with the precious luxuries and grunt with joy as he puffed 
away in loneliness and gloom. And many a time I have seen 
a full-grown man, with mature children of his own, burn his 
fingers in hastily pinching out his cigarette at the unexpected 
approach of his aged father or mother. Mexican women 



230 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

may smoke after their marriage, but of coiu'se with the same 
restriction. 

With the Indians the lines are more closely drawn. A 
woman is not to think of smoking. I have known a case 
where an Indian gu-l, who had learned this and other bad 
habits from the superior race, was caught by her parents 
with a cigarette in her mouth ; and her tongue was slit at 
the tip as a warning against such unladylike tricks. The 
Pueblo lad dare not smoke even by himself before he is 
twenty-five years old, unless he has established his warlike 
prowess by taking a seal]),* or has been given " the freedom 
of the smoke " upon acquu'ing full membership in one of the 
branches of medicine-men, like Refugio. And even then he 
must not smoke in presence of his parents or any one who is 
his senior, without their direct permission, which is very sel- 
dom given. 

In all Pueblo dealings with their brethren and other In- 
dians the cigarette is a flag of truce, a covenant, a bond 
whose sanctity was never violated. When a Pueblo meets 
any heathen Indian — for all Pueblos rank themselves as 
Christians — his first act is to toss him the little guaje of 
tobacco with a corn-husk. He never hands it. If the 
stranger pick up the offering, there is unbreakable peace 
between them, and they sit do'v^n and smoke the sacred 
smoke in amity, though their respective people may be at 
war. If an Indian went out to slay his bitterest foe and 

* Of course it is now a great while since they have earned the privi- 
lege thus. 



THE PRAYING SMOKE. 231 

in a tliouglitless moment accepted a cigarette from him, he 
would have to forego the coveted scalp. 

It is only recently that I have been able to settle the 
mooted question whether the Indians of the southwest 
smoked before the Spaniards came, three hundi'ed and fifty 
years ago, for these Indians did not have tobacco until after 
the conquest. This late but conclusive evidence establishes 
the fact that they did smoke. The ancient substitutes for 
tobacco were two herbs known in Tigua as hu-a-ree and p'ee- 
en-Jileh. They are much more aromatic than tobacco, but 
do not, as the Indians observe, "make drunk so much" as 
our weed. I have been unable to get gi*een specimens of the 
plants for classification. The dried leaves are brought great 
distances from certain spots in the mountains. 

In the primitive cigarette, which the Tiguans call tveer, no 
paper was used, of course, for this country was then inno- 
cent of paper j nor were corn-husks. The iveer was made by 
punching out the pith of a reed common in the Rio Grande 
vaUey, and ramming the hollow full of p'ee-en-hleh or ku-a- 
ree. All ceremonial cigarettes are so made still; for the 
brown paper or oja smoke is " not good " for religious mat- 
ters. The reed, however, may be filled with tobacco instead 
of the older weeds and still be efficacious. 

Himself an altogether matchless observer, the Indian is 
equally adept at eluding observation. If he has a secret 
duty to perform when you are around, he will do it be- 
fore your very face with such sang-froid and such wizardly 
sleight of hand that you will never dream what he is doing, 



232 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

or that lie is doing anytliiiig out of the ordinary. I had 
watched the sacred-smoke prayer ten thousand times with- 
out the remotest suspicion of it, and my observation was nei- 
ther indifferent nor without the sharpening which association 
mth Indians must give the dullest senses. It was only after 
a hint, and when I came one day to see — myself unseen — 
an old Indian lighting his cigarette, and noticed that each 
of the first six puffs was sent in a different dii'ection, that I 
began to suspect a ceremony and to watch for further proof. 
Then I saw that every smoker did the same thing, though, 
when in company, with an infinite precaution which made it 
almost imperceptible. The world is full of evil spirits — 
nothing else is so ever-present in the Indian mind as the 
fear of witches — and these must be propitiated as weU as the 
Trues. This cardinal smoking at the outset of the cigarette 
is both an offering to the Trues and exorcism of witches. 

It is the collective smoke of the sacred tveer that forms the 
rain-clouds and brings the rain. Tobacco smoke has not this 
virtue. In the spring medicine-making, when the year is to 
be foretold, and at any special medicine-making that may be 
had to stave off a threatened drought, the whole junta indus- 
triously smokes iveer, to help with its cloud-compeUing vapor 
in the answer of theii^ own prayers for rain. Since in the 
preparation for one of these ceremonials the medicine-men 
have to shut themselves up in the medicine-house for from 
four to eight days — never going out, nor eating, nor mo\dng 
from their appointed seats, and with no relief save drinking 
water and smoking — their united efforts in that time make 



THE PRAYING SMOKE. 233 

a cloud surely sufficient in volume, whatever may be its 
capacities for precipitation. 

I have already told you of the "drawing-dance" before 
every hunt, wherein the weer is smoked to blind the eyes 
of the game j and that in the hunt itself a steady smoking 
is kept up by the shamans of the chase for the same pur- 
pose. The tveer also figures in all medicine-makings, to dispel 
witches and for other purposes. In looking into the magic 
cajetej the Father of All Medicine stoops and blows the sacred 
smoke slowly across the water in that important bowl, and it 
is then that he can see in that cui-ious mirror (so he says) all 
that is going on in the world. The manner in which the film 
of vapor hovers upon the water or curls up from it in hasty 
spirals indicates whether the year will be calm or windy. 
This smoke mirror is also particularly used in the detec- 
tion of witches, whom it reveals in their evil tricks, however 
hidden. 

When one is sick the male head of the family wi'aps a few 
pinches of tobacco in a corn-husk, ties the packet with a corn- 
husk string, and with this offering goes to the medicine-man 
and requests him to come and cure the invalid. And it is a 
sovereign fee — a shaman whose services you cannot hire by 
whatsoever present of money or valuables cannot refuse your 
request if you come to him with an offering of the weed. 
This certainly indicates a freedom from avarice which the 
professional men of more civilized races do not always imi- 
tate, for the Indian is as fond of his family as are any of us, 
and would pay his last pony and last silver necklace for the 



234 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

curing of his sick if it were demanded. ludeed, the whole 
shaman code of ethics is a very creditable one. 

The ceremonial weer dare not be lighted with a match or 
at a common blaze. It can be ignited only from the sacred 
fire in the estufa, a coal from the cacique's house, a flint and 
steel, or the ancient fire-drill, which is here a diy, round stick 
fitting tightly into a cavity in the end of another, and re- 
volved rapidly from right to left (even in so trivial a matter 
as this the wrong order must be avoided) until the hollow is 
sufficiently hot to ignite the primitive tinder under a coaxing 
breath. Very old men who are True Believers still dislike 
to light even their pleasure cigarettes in the suspicious mod- 
ern ways, and will, if possible, pluck a coal in their skinny 
fingers to start the precious smoke. 

When a person dies here, the medicine-men, who come to 

insure the safety of the departed on his four days' journey to 

the other world, perform very intricate and mysterious rites, 

very largely designed to hide his trail from the evil spirits, 

who would otherwise be sure to follow and harass him, and 

would very likely succeed in switching him off altogether 

from the happy land and into " the place where devils are." 

Among other things the body is surrounded during these 

four days with the tracks of the road-runner * to lead the 

witches on a false trail, and the sacred smoke is continuously 

blown about that they may not see which way the departed 

went. 

* A small pheasant. 



XIX 



THE DANCE OP THE SACRED BARK. 




|E would hardly look for refinements of language 
among Indians, but, like many of our other 
notions about them, this is not fully correct. 
They do use euphemisms, and invent pleasant- 
sounding phrases for unpleasant things. One 
of the best examples of this is the manner in which they 
speak of one of theu' most savage customs. They hardly ever 
talk of scalps or scalping ; instead of those harsh words they 
have very innocent paraphrases. Among my Tigua neigh- 
bors this ghastly trophy is spoken of as "the sacred hair," 
or "the oak-bark," or "the sacred bark" — all very natural 
Indian metaphors. An important folk-story of Isleta relates 
how two boys who smoked before they had proved themselves 
men were reproved by their grandfather, a wise old medicine- 
man. He told them that before they could be allowed to 
smoke they must go to the Eagle Feather Mountains (the 
Manzano range), and bring him some of the " bark of the 
oak." The youths went out in all innocence and peeled the 
bark from several trees, and were greatly chagrined when 
their grandfather sternly told them to go and try again. At 



236 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

last a wise mole solved the riddle for them, and du'ected them 
against a band of marauding Navajos, from whose heads the 
boys got the " bark " which entitled them thereafter to the 
privilege of smoking. 

It is a good many years since my kindly "friends and 
fellow-citizens" of the pueblo of Isleta have taken a scalp, 
and they were never universal snatchers of " the sacred hair." 
All their traditions assure me that they never did have the 
habit of scalping Americans, Mexicans, or Pueblo Indians — 
no Christians, in fact — but only the heathen savages who 
surrounded them, and for so many bloody centimes harassed 
and murdered ceaselessly these quiet village people. More- 
over, it has always been against their rule to scalp the women 
of even these barbarous foes. 

Some eighteen years must have gone by since the last 
scalps were brought to Isleta. One of them came at the 
belt of my pleasant next-door neighbor, Bartolo Jojola. He 
is one of the official Delight-Makers, or K6-sJia-re, and fully 
competent to hold his own with any civihzed clown of the 
ring. A band of Comanches from over the mountains to the 
east stole silently into the pueblo one stormy midnight to 
steal what stock they might. A lot of horses were in a 
strong corral of pahsades, whose tops were bound wdth ii*on- 
like ropes of rawhide. One Comanche climbed quietly into 
the inclosure, with the end of a lasso in his hand. He at 
that end, and a companion outside, sawed the rope back and 
forth until the rawhides were cut. Then several posts were 
uprooted, the horses were led out, and off went the robbers 



THE DANCE OF THE SACRED BARK. 237 

and theii' booty without arousing any one. But at daybreak 
— for my friends are very early risers — the alarm was given. 
A posse was organized and followed the robbers across the 
Rio Grande, across the twenty-mile plateau east of us, and 
over the ten-thousand-foot Manzano Mountains. At last 
they overtook the raiders on the edge of the great plains, 
and there was a fierce fight. The Comanches, who were, as a 
tribe, the best horsemen America has ever seen, resorted to 
their favorite tactics of savage and repeated cavalry charges. 
The Isletehos, though admirable riders, were no match on 
horseback for these Centaurs of the plains, so they dis- 
mounted and received the charge on foot. So effective was 
the fire of their flint-locks that the Comanches took to flight. 
The Isletehos recovered the stolen horses, besides capturing 
many new ones and a dozen scalps. 

Since then there have been none of these ghastly trophies 
brought to Isleta ; and yet the scalp plays an important part 
in the ceremonials of the village, and in a secret niche in the 
wall of the dark, round estufa rests a priceless horde of the 
sacred " barks," which are still taken out and danced over at 
their due season. 

The Indian does not take a scalp through cruelty, but 
just as civilized soldiers fight for and preserve the captured 
battle-flags of the enemy, as trophies and proofs of prowess 
in war. Not being refined enough to see the barbarity of 
taking a physical trophy, he does very much what civilized 
nations did not many centuries ago, when ghastly heads on 
pikes were no uncommon sight ; and he takes it chiefly be- 



238 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

cause lie believes that with it the valor and skill of the former 
possessor become his own. 

The scalp is taken by making a rongh circle of slashes 
around the skull, and then tearing off the broad patch of 
skin and hair by main force. It is a very di'eadful opera- 
tion, never to be forgotten by those who have once seen it. 
The trophy must be cui^ed by him who took it, which he pro- 
ceeds to do with the utmost care. Many magical powers are 
supposed to reside in the scalp. Even a third party who 
touches it, by accident or design, becomes possessed of some 
of its vii'tues, though he is thereby also forced to certain 
temporary self-denials. 

When a war-party returns to the pueblo with scalps it is 
a very serious matter. They cannot enter the town, nor can 
their anxious families come out to meet them. If they have 
been westward after the Apaches, Navajos, or Utes, they 
make a solemn halt on the center of the Hill of the Wind, a 
volcanic peak twelve miles west of here ; and if to the east 
after Comanches, they stop at a corresponding point on their 
retm^n on the east side of the Rio Grande. There they camp 
with the scalps, and send one-half their number forward to 
the pueblo, where they dare not go to their homes, but repair 
at once to the cacique, and make their report to him. For 
fourteen days the half who are out on the hiUs keep their 
camp, sending out scouts daily to the lookouts in the lava 
peaks to guard against the approach of an enemy ; and the 
half who have come to town are secluded in the estufa, fast- 
ing and forbidden any intercourse with their families. At 



THE DANCE OF THE SACRED BARK. 239 

the end of tliis two weeks the warriors who have been shut 
up in the estufa march out and relieve their companions in 
camp, staying there with the scalps w^hile the others come in 
to fast in the estufa. After fourteen days more the men in 
camp start toward town, those from the estufa meet them 
half-way, and all enter the pueblo singing "man-songs" 
(songs of war), and carry the scalps first to the cacique and 
then to the estufa. 

Then begins another period of fasting and seK-purification 
— twelve days for those who have touched a scalp in any 
way, and eight days for those who have not. Every act is 
regulated with the most minute and scrupulous care. The 
estufa is always surrounded with the utmost sacredness, and 
its etiquette is more punctilious than anything we know of. 
The estufa is a building by itself, round and low, with a 
diameter of from forty to fifty feet. It has no doors in the 
sides, but is reached by ladders from ground to roof, and 
from the roof by another ladder down through a trap-door 
to the interior. The interior of the estufa is a plain, circular 
room, with walls bare, save for a few antlers and rude paint- 
ings of the sacred animals. One must not forget himself in 
entering the estufa. Reaching the roof, he must approach 
the trap-door from the west side, back down the ladder, turn 
to his right when at the bottom, and make a complete circuit 
of the room, a foot from the wall, ere he takes Ms seat in the 
semicircle around the sacred fire. If he were thoughtlessly 
to turn to the left in any of these maneuvers, it would be 
sure death j for the Trues would let loose on him the ghost 



240 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

of the scalped man, who, clad only in a dark blue breech- 
clout and with a lasso coiled over his shoulder, would chase 
and touch him, whereupon he would fall dead ! When they 
come to leave the estuf a they approach the foot of the lad- 
der from the left, and on reaching the roof turn to the right, 
walk around the roof, and finally descend to the ground 
backward, in hard-earned safety. 

The seat of the cacique is at the west side of the fii'eplace ; 
that of his fii'st assistant opposite him on the east, and the 
acolytes fill the semicircle between. In a semicii'cle around 
these are the Cum-pa-huit-la-wen, who are guards of the es- 
tuf a ; and in successive semicircles come all the rest of the 
audience. All face away from the fire until the cacique rises 
and speaks, when all face toward it, and so remain through 
the rest of the session. This sacred fire is made only by the 
Hoo-mah-koon, and must be started with only the sacred 
fii'e-di-ill or flint and steel. Most of the men present smoke, 
but never use matches. Their cigarettes must be Hghted only 
at the sacred fire. 

After the days of preparation in this punctilious spot, the 
scalp-takers and other warriors emerge to hold the Tu-a- 
fu-aVy or " Mad Dance," in commemoration of their victory. 
The dance — which is never allowed to be witnessed by 
strangers — is held in a small square near the estuf a. The 
dancers are formed in two lines, facing each other, with 
alternate men and women. The men are in their war paint, 
and each carries a bow and arrow in his left hand, and in his 
right a single aiTow with the point upward. The women 



THE DANCE OF THE SACRED BARK. 241 

wear their gayest dresses and silver ornaments, but carry 
nothing in their hands. All the dancers move in perfect 
rhythm to the monotonous chant of the singers and the 
thump, thump of the big aboriginal drum. The chant is a 
metrical account of the battle and the manner in which the 
scalps were taken. 

As soon as the dance is fairly under way, the " Bending 
Woman" makes her appearance. She is the official custo- 
dian of the scalps ; has taken them from theu' sealed hiding- 
place in the estufa, and brushed them carefully with a sacred 
broom made in the mountains ; and now carries them in a 
buckskin on her back, bending forward under the weight of 
their importance. As the dancers perform their evolutions 
she walks slowly and solemnly up and down between their 
lines with her precious bui'den. 

This Mad Dance lasts four entire days. About seven 
o'clock on the evening of the last day comes KJmr-slm-ar, 
the concluding Round Dance. A big bonfii'e is lighted, and 
the two parallel hues of dancers deploy around it until they 
form a large circle, the principal singers dropping out of the 
ranks, and clustering around the drummer beside the fii'e. 

The song of the Round Dance is one of the prettiest of all 
sung by the Pueblos. It really is melodious and " catching." 
At the end of every phrase the effect is heightened by a cho- 
rus of high yells, in imitation of the war-whoop or " enemy- 
yell." Some of the older dancers, to whom the ceremony 
recalls real memories of their own, add dolefid wails hke 
those of the wounded. The whole performance is weird, but 
16 



242 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

not savage seeming. It lias become merely a ritual — not a 
rehearsal of ferocity. 

The chant and the dancing are kept up all night, until sun- 
rise ends the celebration. All then repair to the estuf a ; the 
Bending Woman puts the scalps back in their niche, covers 
it with a flat slab of stone, and seals it over with mud. 

The chief of the Cum-pa-huit-la-w^en, after a solemn silence, 
says, '' Brothers, friends, a road is given you" (that is, "You 
are free to depart "), and all file out, free to break their long 
abstinence, and enjoy themselves until the war-captain shall 
again summon them to the field. 

Now that no fresh scalps have been acquired for so long, 
the old ones are still brought forth at a fixed time, and do 
duty, as the inspiration of the T'u-a-fii-ar. This dance, how- 
ever, like many of the other old customs, is not so well kept 
up in Isleta as in some of the more remote pueblos which 
have not been so much affected by civilization. The T'u-a- 
fii-ar which I witnessed here in the fall of 1891 was the first 
the Isletenos had had in four years, though it should be held 
yearly. There was another in 1892. 



XX. 



DOCTORING THE YEAR. 




ilTH the Pueblo Indians the sick are not the 
only ones in need of doctoring. The medicine- 
men — those most important of Indian person- 
ages — have for patients not only sick people 
but weU ones, and even the crops and the whole 
year's success. It would seem to a civilized physician a 
ridiculous affair to prescribe for the seasons and to feel the 
pulse of the corn-fields 5 but my aboriginal neighbors see no 
incongruity in it. On the contrary, they deem this profes- 
sional treatment of inanimate things as essential a matter as 
the care of the sick, and would have no hopes at aU for the 
success of any year which was not duly provided for at the 
start by a most solemn dose of " medicine." 

"Medicine" to an Indian has not merely the restricted 
sense in which we use it. Wahr (the word used by the Tig- 
uas) means almost every influence of every sort that affects 
the human race. The Indian has no idea of blind chance or 
unintelligent forces. To him everything is sentient ; every 
influence which is agi'eeable in its effects is a good spirit or 



244 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

the work of a good spirit ; and every influence whicli liarms 
hiin is, or comes from, an evil spirit. All these influences 
are "medicines;" and so also, in a secondary sense, are the 
material agencies used to invoke or check theni. The med- 
icine-men, therefore, are people with supposed supernatural 
powers, who use good influences (either visible remedies or 
spiritual means) to bring welfare to the people and avert evil 
from them. A medicine-man has also power over the bad 
influences ; but if he were to use that power to harm people 
he would be said to ''have the evil road," and would be 
regarded no longer as a medicine-man, but as a witch — for 
the obligation to do good deeds only is doubly strong upon 
those who have powers not given to other men. 

There are in the pueblo of Isleta countless medicine-mak- 
ings, little and great, general "and special ; but the two most 
important ones of the year are the Si3ring Medicine-Making 
(or Medicine-Dance, as it is often called) to make the season 
prosperous, and the Medicine-Dance" of thanksgiving to the 
good spirits, after the fall crops are harvested. 

Tlie Spring Medicine-Making, whicli is called in this lan- 
guage Tu-sliee-umn, is held generally about the middle of 
March, when the mild winter of the Rio Grande valley is 
practically done, and it is time to begin opening the gi'eat 
irrigating ditches, and other spring work. Every smallest 
detail is conducted with the utmost secrecy ; and gentle as 
these people are, the safety of an American who should be 
caught spying upon any of these secrets would be very 
small indeed. For personal reasons it is impossible for me 



DOCTORING THE YEAR. 245 

to divulge how I learned the following facts, but I can per- 
sonally vouch for all of them. 

When it is felt to be time to forecast and propitiate the 
year, the first step in the matter is taken by the Chief Cap- 
tain of War and his seven sub-captains. They come together 
at liis house ; and he sends out the sub-captains to notify all 
the different branches of medicine-men — of which there are 
many. Each branch of medicine sends a delegate to the 
meeting, which proceeds to consider the best manner of tak- 
ing the first formal step — the presentation of the sacred corn- 
meal to the Kah-ahm Ch'oom-nin, the two Heads of All Medi- 
cine. The matter is fully discussed, and is finally put to vote 
of the meeting. As a rule the Chief Captain of War is chosen 
for tills most important mission — unless he chances to be 
very ignorant of the necessary ceremonial songs, in which 
rare event one of the sub-captains is selected. 

On the day after this meeting — which can be held only 
after sundown — the chosen war-captain, with his associate 
next in rank, must perform the errand. Dui'ing the day the 
wife, mother, or sister of the senior of them carefully selects 
the best ears from her store of corn, and in a dark room 
grinds a handful into meal, on the metate (stone hand-mill), 
all the time praying that the errand of the sacred meal may 
be successful. 

After sundown the ambassador wi^aps this bit of meal 
carefully in a clean square of corn-husk, and ties the packet 
with a corn-husk string. With this in his right hand he 
walks gravely to the house of the Head of All Medicine. 



246 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

There are two of these dignitaries in this pueblo, one rep- 
resenting the Isleteiios proper, and the other the Queres* 
colony here. They always begin as members of some special 
medicine order^ but are promoted by degrees, until they leave 
their original orders altogether and become the two general 
and supreme heads of all the orders. To only one of these 
— the "Father of Here" — does the embassy go. 

Entering the house, the bearer of the meal and his assist- 
ant sit down by the fire with the Father of Here, smoke 
the sacred cigarette to ward off evil spirits, and talk awhile 
on general matters. After a cigarette or two, the visitors 
rise and pray to the Trues on all sides to grant them success. 
The Father of Here of course knows all the time what is 
coming, but pretends not to hear them at all. Having fin- 
ished their prayers, they turn to address him directly, telling 
him he is desired to make Tu-shee-wim (medicine " for all the 
village "), to see if the year will be good, and to drive away 
evil spirits. Then the senior captain hands him the packet 
of sacred meal, which is always proffered and taken with the 
right hand only. For either of them to use the left hand 
in this (or any other) ceremonial would be sure death ! As 
long as the visitors remain, the Father of Here must hold 
the meal in his hand. After they are gone, he walks to the 
house of the Father of the Queres and shares it with him — 
unless it is already too late at night, in which case he does 
not go until after sundown the next day. 

The morning after both the Heads of All Medicine have 
* Pronounced Edy-ress, 



DOCTORING THE YEAR. 247 

the sacred meal, they meet before sunrise at a point in the 
sand-hills east of the river. As the sun comes up over the 
Eagle Feather Mountains, they pray to the Sun-Father long 
and earnestly. Each now holds the sacred meal in his left 
hand, and each as he invokes some blessing on the people takes 
with his right hand a little pinch of the meal, breathes on it 
and tosses it toward the sun, until the meal is all gone. They 
pray that the Trues will send abundant rain, make the crops 
large, give plenty of grass for the herds, send good health 
to the village, etc. And when the meal has all been blown 
away, they return to the village and summon together their 
respective original medicine orders. With this morning be- 
gin the eight days of abstinence, purification, and preparation 
for the great event. Only the two special branches of medi- 
cine-men have to keep this ceremonial. The first four days 
are the " Outside Days," when the medicine-men may move 
about the pueblo and ^dsit friends, but must keep their 
special fast. Then come the four " Inside Days," and with 
the beginning of these the medicine-men enter the medicine- 
house. There each is given a special seat, from which he 
must not move until the four days are over. In front of 
each stands a tinaja (jar) of water; and he may drink as 
much as he chooses, but must not touch a mouthfid of food 
in all those days, nor must a ray of sunlight strike him. The 
Common Mother, Kai-id-deJi, the wife of the Head of All 
Medicine, is the only other soul who can enter that solemn 
room ; and she sweeps it, brings them water and tobacco for 
cigarettes, and a sacred coal to light them. Day and night 



248 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

the fasters sit and smoke, the okier men rehearsing the tradi- 
tions of the order for the benefit of the younger, who must 
learn all these stories by heart. Diuing all this time, no 
other person dare even call at the door. At about ten o'clock 
in the morning of the fourth Inside Day, any Americans or 
other strangers who may chance to be in town are sent out 
or shut up under a good-natured l)ut inflexible sentinel. 
Then the coast is clear for the Cum-pa-huit-la-wen. Four 
pairs of these marshals are sent out, one pair to each cardinal 
point. In passing through the village they wear blankets, 
but once outside, cast these off and go running swiftly, clad 
only in then* moccasins and the breech-clout. Besides then- 
inseparable bows and arrows — the insignia of then* office — 
each pair of guards carries a single " prayer-stick " which has 
been made that morning by the Head of All Medicine. This 
prayer-stick is a bit of wood about the size of a lead-pencil, 
with certain magical feathers bound to it in a certain way, 
varying according to the object to be prayed for. 

The guards carry these prayer-sticks a long distance, plant 
them upright in some lonely and sheltered spot east, north, 
west, and south of the village, pray over them, and then set 
out on a long, wild run across country. At last they re- 
turn to town across the fields and gardens (for these Indians 
are most industrious farmers) "blowing away the witches." 
Each guard carries a long feather in either hand, and as he 
nms homeward he is continually crossing these and snapping 
one over the other — which is supposed to toss up all evil 
spirits so that the winds wiU bear them away. 



DOCTORING THE YEAR. 249 

The medicine-making (or "dance") begins about eight 
o'clock that evening in the room where the f asters have kept 
their Inside Days. Before the doors are opened, the medi- 
cine-men remove their ordinary garments — for medicine- 
making must be done with only the dark-blue breech-clout 
— and paint their faces with yeso (a dingy whitewash made 
from gypsum) and almagre (a red mineral paint). The 
Father of All Medicine is marked with the yeso print of a 
bare hand on the outside of each thigh, and on the chest ; 
and the two medicine-men who are to be the first perform- 
ers — always the two who have last been received into the 
order — are indicated by yeso lightnings on their legs, as a 
symbol that they are the forerunners. 

When the door is opened, the people outside remove their 
moccasins and stand motionless. The medicine-men sing, and 
the Father of All Medicine goes out to the public. Then he 
chooses the principal man of them all — always the cacique 
if that functionary is present — turns his back to him, and 
puts the tips of the eagle-feathers he carries back over his 
own shoulders. The cacique takes these tips in his hands, 
and is thus led into the room followed in single file by the 
peoi)le. He is given the " seat of honor '' nearest the medi- 
cine-men ; and the general public seats itself at will outside 
a line which has been drawn on the adobe floor about ten 
feet in front of the medicine-men, sitting only on moccasins 
and blankets. The shamans are seated in a semicircle, fac- 
ing the public. The Father of All Medicine sits in the cen- 
ter, and the rest are ranged on either side of him in the order 



250 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

of their rank, so that the two men at the ends of the semi- 
circle are the newest in the order. In front of each medi- 
cine-man is the sacred " Mother," the chief implement of all 
medicine-branches — a flawless ear of white corn, with a tuft 
of downy feathers at the top, and tiu*quoise ornaments.* And 
in front of the Father of All Medicine is the cajete (earthen 
bowl) of sacred water, in whose clear bosom he can see all 
that is going on in the world ! 

When the public is seated, the medicine-men sing a sacred 
song to make the people center theu' thoughts on nothing 
but the matter in hand. The Enghsh of this song would be 
about as follows : 

Now brin^ the Corn, Our Mother, 

And all the common corn ; 

In all our thoughts and words 

Let us do only good ; 

In all our acts and words 

Let us be all as one. 

Wliile this song is being sung over several times, the two 
youngest medicine-men rise from their seats on the floor, and 
step to where a bowl of sacred corn-meal stands before the 
Father of All Medicine. Here they stand and pray, at each 
request picking up a pinch of the meal and blomng part of 
it toward the Father of All Medicine and part toward the 
Mother-Corn. Then they go down the aisle, which is kept 
open, to the door, crossing and snapping their eagle-feathers 
to toss up and blow away any evil thought that may be in the 
crowd. By the time they return to the open space the song 
* The emblem of the soul. 



DOCTOEING THE YEAR. 251 

is ended and another is begun ; and now the next yonng-est 
pair of medicine-men rise and join the first, going through 
the same performance. This is kept up till nearly all the 
medicine-men are on their feet together. Then begins the 
wonderful sleight of hand, which is the most startling feature 
of all, and the one which maintains the superstitious power 
of the shamans over their people. It is described in another 
chapter. This conjui'ing, which is the ''Medicine-Dance" 
proper, continues through five songs. Then the performers 
take their seats for a rest, and smoke cigarettes which the 
Cum-pa-huit-la-wen roll for them, and presently rise to re- 
sume their magic. 

When this medicine-making is done — which is only when 
all present are cured of all their real or imaginary diseases 
— comes the equally important Ta-win-7c6or-sliaJin-mee-ee, the 
sacred " going-out-for-the-year." The Father of All Medicine 
rises, with the two next in rank to himseK, and dances awhile. 
Then he puts on his left hand and arm a great glove of the 
skin of a bear's fore-leg, with the claws on ; and upon each 
foot a similar boot from the bear's hind-leg. In the glove he 
sticks his eagle-feathers ; but his two assistants, who do not 
have the bear-trappings, carry their feathers in their hands. 
Wliile these three shamans stand in a row before the assem- 
blage, the others sing for them a special song : 



Ai-ay, ai-ay, hyah ay-ah 
Ay-ah, ay-ah, ay-ah! 

After the Sun-Father 

We will follow, follow, follow I 



252 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

When this song is sung a second time, the Father of All 
Medicine goes behind his two assistants and looks in the 
sacred cajete, to find if it be time to go out. Seeing that it 
is, he starts on a half -run to the door, followed by the two 
others. There are always two Cum-pa-huit-la-wen at the door, 
and one of these accompanies the three shamans. They 
go to a certain point on the bank of the Rio Grande, and 
there receive the omens which they declare the river brings 
down to them from its source in the home of the Tnies 
of the North. Among these tokens are always bunches 
of green blades of corn and wheat — many weeks before a 
spear of either cereal is growing out-of-doors within hun- 
dreds of miles of here. Last year ^' the river brought them " 
also a live rabbit — which is much more easily accounted for 
— as a sign that it would be a good year for game. 

Returning with these articles, they enter the medicine- 
house, and show them to the whole assemblage. If the leaves 
are green and lusty, it will be a good year for crops ; but if 
they are yellow, there will be a drought. Then the three 
" Goers-Out " lay the articles before their medicine-seats and 
sit down for a rest. 

Then the medicine-making song is resumed, and the con- 
juring begins again, and is kept up almost all night. 

After a possible witch-chase (described in another chapter) 
comes the sacred water-giving. The two youngest shamans 
take the cajetes and carry them before the crowd. To each 
person they give a mouthful, praying the Trues to give him 
a clean heart, strength, and health. The recipient does not 



DOCTORING THE YEAR. 253 

swallow all the water, but blows a little on his hands and 
rubs it upon his body, beheving that it will give him strength. 

After all have had the sacred water, the next ceremony is 
the Kd-Jcee-roon, the " Mother-Shaking." The Father of All 
Medicine takes up all the (corn) " Mothers," two at a time, 
and shakes them over the heads of the seated audience, rain- 
ing a shower of seeds. The people eagerly scramble for these 
seeds, for it is fii^mly believed that he who puts even one of 
them with his spring planting ^vill secure a very large crop. 

All the audience who desii^e now go in front of the semi- 
circle of seated medicine-men and pray, scattering the sacred 
corn-meal on the row of " Mothers." Then all sing a long 
song, of which the verse has the following meaning : 

Now ! Now ! 

Our Mother, Corn Mother ! 
Her Sun is coming up ! 
Our Mother, Corn Mother ! 
Her Sun is arriving ! 
Our Mother, Corn Mother ! 
Her Sun is entering ! 
She is the one who 
Gives us the road. 
She is the one who 
Makes the road. 
She is the one who 
Points the road to us ! 

This song is a sort of benediction, and is sung standing. 
It is begun when the morning sun is really coming up be- 
hind the mountains, and the Father of All Medicine can no 
longer delay to "give them the road" — that is, dismiss the 



254 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

meeting. He rises and prays to the Trues to bless all present 
and those who were unable to attend, and to crown the year 
with success to all. Then he says : "A road is given you/' 
and the people all file out, and when once outside put on 
their moccasins and hurry home. 

After they are gone, all the women bring to the door offer- 
ings of food, which are set before the medicine-men by the 
Common Mother, and they eat heartily after their long and 
trying fast. Wliat is left is divided among them to be taken 
home. Having eaten and smoked, the medicine-men wash 
off the ceremonial paint, resume their ordinary clothing, 
close the medicine-house, and return to their homes. That 
is the end of the Tu-sJiee-tvim, and the year is now supposed 
to be safely started toward a successful issue — which will 
largely depend, however, upon later and special medicine- 
makings for special occasions and emergencies. 



XXL 



AN ODD PEOPLE AT HOME. 




this view of the Strange Corners we onght cer- 
tainly to include a glimpse at the home-life of 
the Pueblos. A social organization which looks 
upon children as belonging to the mother and 
not to the father; which makes it absolutely 
imperative that husband and wife shall be of different di\d- 
sions of society ; which makes it impossible for a man to 
own a house, and gives every woman entire control of her 
home — with many other equally remarkable points of eti- 
quette — is surely different from what most of us are used 
to. But in the neglected corners of om* own country there 
are ten thousand citizens of the United States to whom these 
curious arrangements are endeared by the customs of im- 
memorial centuries. 

The basis of society in the twenty-six quaint town-republics 
of the Pueblos — communities which are by far the most 
peaceful and the best-governed in North America — is not the 
family, as with us, but the clan. These elans are clusters of 
families — arbitrary social divisions, of which there are from 



256 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

six to sixteen in each Pueblo town. In Isleta there are six- 
teen clans — the Sun People, the Earth People, the Water- 
Pebble People, the Eagle People, the Mole People, the Ante- 
lope People, the Deer People, the Mountain-Lion People, the 
Turquoise People, the Parrot People, the White Corn People, 
the Red Corn People, the Blue Corn People, the Yellow Corn 
People, the Goose People, and the Wolf People. Every In- 
dian of the eleven hundred and fifty in the pueblo belongs 
to one of these clans. A man of the Eagle People cannot 
marry a woman of that clan, nor vice versa. Husband and 
wife must be of different clans. Still odder is the law of de- 
scent. With us — and aU ci\'ilized nations — descent is from 
the father ; but with the Pueblos, and nearly aU aboriginal 
peoples, it is from the mother. For instance, a man of the 
Wolf Clan marries a woman of the Mole Clan. Their chil- 
dren belong not to the Wolf People but to the Mole People, 
by birth. But if the parents do not personally like the head 
man of that clan, they can have some friend adopt the chil- 
dren into the Sun or Earth or any other clan. 

There are no Indian family names ; but aU the people here 
have taken Spanish ones — and the children take the name of 
their mother and not of their father. Thus, my landlady is 
the wife of Antonio Jojola. Her own name is Maria Gracia 
Chiliuiliui ; and their roly-j)oly son — who is commonly known 
as Juan Gordo, " Fat John," or, as often, since I once photo- 
graphed him crawling out of an adobe oven, as Juan Biscocho, 
"John Biscuit" — is Juan Chihuihui. If he grows up to 
marry and have children, they will not be Chihuihuis nor Jo- 



AN ODD PEOPLE AT HOME. 257 

jolas, but will bear the Spardsli last name of his wife. This 
pueblo, however, is changing from the old customs more than 
are any of the other towns ; and in some families the chil- 
dren are divided, the sons bearing the father's name, and the 
daughters the mother's. In their own language, each Indian 
has a single name, which belongs to him or her alone, and is 
never changed. 

The Pueblos almost without exception now have their 
children baptized in a Christian church and given a Spanish 
name. But those who are " True Believers " in " the Ways of 
the Old " have also an Indian christening. Even as I wiite, 
scores of dusky, dimpled babes in this pueblo are being given 
strange Tigua names by stalwart godfathers, who hold them 
up before the line of dancers who celebrate the spring open- 
ing of the great main irrigating-ditch. Here the christening 
is performed by a friend of the family, who takes the babe to 
the dance, selects a name, and seals it by putting his lips to 
the child's lips.* In some pueblos this office is performed by 
the nearest woman-friend of the mother. She takes the child 
from the house at dawn on the third day after its birth, and 
names it after the first object that meets her eye after the 
sun comes up. Sometimes it is Bluish-Light-of-Dawn, some- 
times Arrow-(ray)of-the-Sun, sometimes TaU-Broken-Pine — 

* My own little girl, born in tlie pueblo of Isleta, was formally 
christened by an Indian friend, one day, and has ever since been kno^NTi 
to the Indians as T'hur-be-say, "the Rainbow of the Sun." For a 
month after her birth they came daily to see her, bringing little gifts 
of silver, calico, chocolate, eggs, Indian pottery, and the like, as is one 
of their customs. 
17 



258 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

and so on. It is this custom which gives rise to many of the 
Indian names which seem so odd to us. 

When a child is born in a Pueblo town, a curious duty 
devolves upon the father. For the next eight days he must 
keep a fire going — no matter what the weather — in the 
quaint little fogon or adobe fireplace, and see that it never 
goes out by day or night. This sacred birth-fire can be kin- 
dled only in the religious ways — by the fire-drill, flint and 
steel, or by a brand from the hearth of the cacique. If pater- 
familias is so unlucky as to let the birth-fire go out, there is 
but one thing for him to do. Wrapping his blanket around 
him, he stalks solemnly to the house of the cacique, enters, 
and seats himseK on the floor by the hearth — for the cacique 
must always have a fire. He dare not ask for what he wants ; 
but making a cigarette, he lights it at the coals and improves 
the opportunity to smuggle a living coal under his blanket 
— generally in no better receptacle than his own tough, bare 
hand. In a moment he rises, bids the cacique good-by, and 
hm'ries home, carefully nursing the sacred spark, and with it 
he rekindles the birth-fire. It is solemnly believed that if this 
fire were relighted in any other manner, the child would not 
live out the year. 

The Pueblo men — contrary to the popular idea about all 
Indians — take a very generous share in caring for their 
children. When they are not occupied with the duties of 
busy farmers, then fathers, grandfathers, and great-grand- 
fathers are generally to be seen each with a fat infant slung 
in the blanket on his back, its big eyes and plump face peep- 



AN ODD PEOPLE AT HOME. 259 

ing over his shoulder. The white-haired Governor, the stern- 
faced War-Captain, the grsiYQ Principales — none of them are 
too dignified to " tote " the baby up and down the coui'tyard 
or to the public square and to solemn dances j or even to 
dance a remarkable domestic jig, if need be, to calm a squall 
from the precious riders upon their backs. 

A Pueblo town is the childi'en's paradise. The parents 
are fairly ideal in their relations to their children. They are 
uniformly gentle, yet never foolishly indulgent. A Pueblo 
child is almost never punished, and almost never needs to 
be. Obedience and respect to age are born in these brown 
young Americans, and are never forgotten by them. I never 
saw a "spoiled child" in all my long acquaintance with 
the Pueblos. 

The Pueblo woman is absolute owner of the house and all 
that is in it, just as her husband owns the fields which he 
tills. He is a good farmer and she a good housewife. Fields 
and rooms are generally models of neatness. 

The Pueblos marry under the laws of the church ; but many 
of them add a strange ceremony of their own — which was 
their custom when Columbus discovered America. The be- 
trothed couple are given two ears of raw corn ; to the youth 
a blue ear, but to the maiden a white one, because her heart 
is supposed to be whiter. They must prove their devotion 
by eating the very last hard kernel. Then they run a sacred 
foot-race in presence of the old councilors. If the giii comes 
in ahead, she " wins a husband " and has a little ascendancy 
over him ; if he comes in first to the goal, he " wins a wife." 



260 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

If tlie two come in together, it is a bad omen, and the match 
is declared off. 

Pueblo etiquette as to the acquaintance of young people is 
extremely strict. No youth and maiden must walk or talk 
together ; and as for a visit or a private conversation, both 
the offenders — no matter how mature — would be soundly 
whipped by their parents. Acquaintance between young peo- 
ple before marriage is limited to a casual sight of each other, 
a shy greeting as they pass, or a word when they meet in 
the presence of their elders. Matches are not made by the 
parents, as was the case with their Mexican neighbors until 
very recently — and as it still is in many Eiu'opean countries 
— but marriages are never against the parental consent. 
When a boy wishes to marry a certain girl, the parents con- 
duct all the formal " asking for " her and other preliminaries. 

The very curious division of the sexes which the Spanish 
found among the Pueblos three hundi^ed and fifty years ago 
has now almost entirely disappeared — as have also the com- 
munity-houses which resulted from the system. In old times 
only the women, gu-ls, and young children lived in the dwell- 
ings. The men and boys slept always in the estuf a. Thither 
their wives and mothers brought theii* meals, themselves 
eating with the children at home. So there was no family 
home-life, and never was untU the brave Spanish mission- 
aries gradually brought about a change to the real home that 
the Indians so much enjoy to-day. 

When an Indian dies, there are many curious ceremonials 
besides the attempts to throw the witches off the track of 



AN ODD PEOPLE AT HOME. 261 

his spirit. Food must be provided for the soul's four days' 
journey; and property must also be sent on to give the de- 
ceased " a good start " in the next world. If the departed was 
a man and had horses and cattle, some of them are killed that 
he may have them in the Beyond. His gun, his knife, his 
bow and arrows, his dancing-costume, his clothing, and other 
personal property are also *^ killed " (in the Indian phrase), by 
burning or breaking them ; and by this means he is supposed 
to have the use of them again in the other world — where he 
will eat and hunt and dance and farm just as he has done 
here. In the vicinity of every Pueblo town is always a 
^'killing-place" — entirely distinct and distant from the con- 
secrated graveyard where the body is laid — and there the 
ground is strewn with countless broken weapons and orna- 
ments, earthen jars, stone hand-mills, and other utensils — 
for when a woman dies, her household furniture is " sent on " 
after her in the same fashion. The precious beads of coral, 
turquoise, and silver, and the other silver jewehy, of which 
these people have great quantities, is generally laid away with 
the body in the bare, brown graveyard in front of the great 
adobe church. 



XXII. 



A SAINT m COURT. 




5HILE law in the abstract may deserve its repu- 
tation as one of the driest of subjects, the 
history of its development, provisions, and ap- 
plications contains much that is cui'ious and 
interesting. There have been, among different 
nations and in different ages, laws remarkable for eccentri- 
city ; and as for the astonishing causes in which the aid of 
justice has been invoked, a mere catalogue of them would be 
of appalling length. Nor are these legal cm'iosities confined 
to bygone ages and half-civilized nations. Our own coun- 
try has fiu-nished laws and lawsuits perhaps as remarkable 
as any. 

Among these suits, none is more interesting than one of 
the few legal contests in which the Pueblo Indians have ever 
figured. With these quiet, decorous, kind, and simple-hearted 
children of the Sun, quarrels of any sort are extremely rare, 
and legal controversies still rarer ; but there was one lawsuit 
between two of the principal Pueblo towns which excited gi'eat 
interest among all the Indians and Mexicans of the territory, 
and the few Saxon-Americans who were then here ; which 



A SAINT IN COURT. 263 

nearly made a war — a lawsuit for a saint ! It was finally ad- 
judicated by the Supreme Court of New Mexico in January, 
1857. It figures in the printed reports of that high tribunal, 
under the title, "The Pueblo of Laguna vs. The Pueblo of 
Acoma" — being an appeal in the case of Acoma vs. Laguna. 
Of aU the nineteen pueblos of New Mexico, Acoma is by 
far the most wonderful. Indeed, it is probably the most re- 
markable city in the world. Perched upon the level summit 
of a great " box " of rock whose perpendicular sides are nearly 
four hundred feet high, and reached by some of the dizziest 
paths ever trodden by human feet, the prehistoric town looks 
far across the wilderness. Its quaint terraced houses of gi*ay 
adobe, its huge church — hardly less wonderful than the pyra- 
mids of Egypt as a monument of patient toil — its great 
reservoir in the solid rock, its superb scenery, its romantic 
history, and the strange customs of its six hundred people, 
aU are rife with interest to the few Americans who visit the 
isolated city. Neither history nor tradition tells us when 
Acoma was founded. The pueblo was once situated on top 
of the Mesa Encantada (Enchanted Table-land), which rises 
seven hundred feet in air near the mesa now occupied. Four 
hundred years ago or so, a frightful storm swept away the 
enormous leaning rock which served as a ladder, and the 
patient people — who were away at the time — had to build a 
new city. The present Acoma was an old town when the first 
European — Coronado, the famous Spanish explorer — saw it 
in 1540. With that its authentic history begins — a strange, 
weird history, in scattered fragments, for which we must 



264 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

delve among the curious " memorials " of the Spanish con- 
querors and the scant records of the heroic priests. 

Laguna lies about twenty miles northeast of Acoma, and 
is now a familiar sight to travelers on the A. & P. R. R., 
which skirts the base of the sloping rock on which the town 
is built. It is a much younger town than Acoma, of which 
it is a daughter colony, but has a half more people. It was 
founded in 1699. 

One of the notable things about the venerable Catholic 
churches of New Mexico is the number of ancient paintings 
and statues of the saints which they contain. Some are the 
rude daubs on wood made by devout Indians, and some are 
the canvases of prominent artists of Mexico and Spain. It 
was concerning one of the latter that the curious lawsuit be- 
tween Laguna and Acoma arose. 

There is considerable mystery concerning this picture, 
arising from the lack of written history. The painting of 
San Jose * (St. Joseph) was probably the one presented by 
Charles II. of Spain. Entregas, in his "Visits,'^ enumer- 
ates the pictures which he found in the Laguna church in 
1773, and mentions among them " a canvas of a yard and a 
half, with the most holy likeness of St. Joseph with his blue 
mark, the which was presented by Our Lord the King." 
The Acomas, however, claim that the king gave the picture 
to them originally, and there is no doubt that it was in their 
possession over a hundred years ago. 

When brave Fray Ramirez founded his lonely mission in 
* PronoTinced Sahn Ho-zdy. 



A SAINT IN COURT. 265 

Acoma in 1629, he dedicated the little adobe chapel " To God, 
to the Holy Catholic Church, and to St. Joseph." San Jos6 
was the patron saint of the pueblo, and when the fine Spanish 
painting of him was hung on the dull walls of a later church, 
it became an object of peculiar veneration to the simple na- 
tives. Their faith in it was touching. Whether it was that 
the attacks of the merciless Apache might be averted, or that 
a pestilence might be checked, or that their crops might be 
abundant, it was to San Jose that they went with prayers 
and votive offerings. And as generation after generation 
was born, hved its quaint life, and was at last laid to rest in 
the wonderful graveyard, the veneration of the painting grew 
stronger and more clear, while oil and canvas were growing 
dim and moldy. 

Many years ago — we do not know the date — the people of 
Laguna found themselves in a very bad way. Several suc- 
cessive crops had failed them, winter storms had wrought 
havoc to house and farm, and a terrible epidemic had carried 
off scores of children. And all this time Acoma was pros- 
pering wonderfully. Acoma believed it was because of San 
Jose ; and Laguna began to believe so too. At last the gov- 
ernor and principal men of Laguna, after solemn council, 
mounted their silver-trapped ponies, wrapped their costHest 
blankets about them, and rode over valley and mesa to " the 
City in the Sky.'' A runner had announced their coming, 
and they were formally received by the principales of Acoma, 
and escorted to the dark estuf a. After a propitiatoiy smoke 
the Laguna spokesman began the speech. They all knew 



266 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

how his pueblo had suffered, while Laguna had no saint 
on whom they could rely. It was now the fii'st of March. 
Holy Week was almost here, and Laguna desired to celebrate 
it with unusual ceremonies, hoping thereby to secure divine 
favor. Would Acoma kindly lend San Jose to her sister 
pueblo for a season, that he might bring his blessing to the 
afflicted town ? 

A white-headed Acoma replied for his people. They knew 
how angry Tata Dios had been mth Laguna, and mshed to 
help appease him if possible. Acoma needed San Jose's pres- 
ence in Holy Week ; but she was prosperous and would do 
without him. She w^ould lend him to Laguna for a month, 
but then he must be returned without fail. 

So next day, when the Laguna delegation started home- 
ward, two strong men carried the precious canvas carefully 
between them, and that night it hung upon the rudely deco- 
rated walls of the Laguna church, while hundreds of solemn 
Indians knelt bef oje it. And in the procession of Holy Week 
it was borne in a little shrine about the town while its escort 
fired their rusty flint-locks in reiterant salute. 

Old men teU me that there was a change in the fortunes of 
Laguna from that day forth. At aU events, when the month 
was up the Lagunas did not return the borrowed painting, 
and the Acoma messengers who came next day to demand it 
were informed that it would stay where it was imless Acoma 
could take it by force of arms. The Acomas then appealed 
to their priest. Fray Mariano de Jesus Lopez, the last of the 
Franciscans here. He cited the principales of both pueblos 



A SAINT IN COURT. 267 

to appear before him in Acoma on a certain day, bringing 
tbe saint. 

When they were all assembled there, the priest ordered a 
season of prayer that God and San Jose would see justice 
done in the matter at issne, and after this held mass. He 
then suggested that they di'aw lots for the saint, to which 
both pueblos cordially agreed, believing that God would di- 
rect the result. It was a solemn and impressive sight when 
aU were gathered in the great, gloomy church. Near the 
altar was a tinaja (earthen jar) covered with a white cloth. 
At each side stood a wee Acoma girl dressed in spotless white, 
from the paiio over her shoulders to the queer, boot-like buck- 
skin leggings. Beside one of them was the old priest, who 
acted for Acoma ; and beside the other were Luis Saraceno 
and Margarita Hernandez, on behalf of Laguna. Twelve 
ballots were put in the tinaja and weU shaken ; eleven were 
blank, the twelfth had a picture of the saint rudely drawn 
upon it. 

"Draw," said Fray Mariano, when all was ready; and 
Maria thrust her httle arm into the jar and di^ew out a ballot, 
which she handed to the priest. "Acoma, blank! Draw, 
Lolita, for Laguna." Lolita dived down and drew a blank 
also. Maria drew the third baUot, and Lolita the fom-th — 
both blanks. And then a devout murmur ran through the 
gathered Acomas as Maria drew forth the fifth paper, which 
bore the little picture of San Jose. 

"God has decided in favor of Acoma," said the priest, 
"and San Jose stays in his old home." The crowd poured 



268 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

out of the church, the Acomas hugging each other and 
thanking God, the Lagunas walking surlily away. 

Such a feast had never been in Acoma as the gTatef ul people 
began to prepare j but their rejoicing was short-lived. That 
very evening a strong armed force of Lagunas came quietly 
up the great stone " ladder " to the lofty town, and appeared 
suddenly in front of the church. " Open the door," they said 
to the frightened sacristan, " or we will break it down. We 
have come for the saint." The news ran through the little 
town like wild-fire. All Acoma was wild with gi-ief and rage ; 
and hopeless as a war with Laguna would have been, it"would 
have commenced then and there but for the counsel of the 
priest. He exhorted his flock to avoid bloodshed and give 
the saint up to the Lagunas, leaving a final decision of the 
dispute to the courts. His advice prevailed ; and after a few 
hours of excitement the Lagunas departed with their precious 
booty. 

As soon thereafter as the machinery of the law could be set 
in motion, the Pueblos of Acoma filed in the District Court 
of the Second Judicial District of New Mexico a bill of 
Chancery vs. the Pueblo of Laguna, setting forth the above 
facts in detail. 

They also asked that a receiver be appointed to take charge 
of San Jose till the matter should be decided. The Lagunas 
promptly filed an answer setting forth that they knew noth- 
ing of Acoma's claim that the picture was originally given to 
Acoma ; that by their own traditions it was clearly the prop- 
erty of Laguna, and that Acoma stole itj that they went 



A SAINT m COURT. 269 

peaceably to reclaim it, and Acoma refused to give it up ; 
that Acoma proposed to draw lots for it, but they refused and 
took it home. 

Judge Kirby Benedict, sitting as chancellor, heard this 
extraordinary case, and the evidence being overwhelmingly 
in favor of Acoma, decided accordingly. The Lagunas ap- 
pealed to the Supreme Court, which after most careful inves- 
tigation affii-med the decision of the chancellor. In rendering 
his decision the judge said : 

"Having disposed of all the points, . . . the court deems it 
not improper to indulge in some reflections on this interest- 
ing case. The history of this painting, its obscure origin, its 
age, and the fierce contest which these two Indian pueblos 
have carried on, bespeak the inappreciable value which is 
placed upon it. The intrinsic value of the oil, paint, and cloth 
by which San Jose is represented to the senses, it has been 
admitted in argument, probably would not exceed twenty- 
five cents J but this seemingly worthless painting has weU- 
nigh cost these two pueblos a bloody and cruel struggle, and 
had it not been for weakness on the pai't of one of the pueb- 
los, its history might have been written in blood. . . . One 
witness swore that unless San Jose is in Acoma, the people 
cannot prevail with God. All these supposed virtues and at- 
tributes pertaining to this saint, and the belief that the throne 
of God can be successfully approached only through him, 
have contributed to make this a case of deep interest, involv- 
ing a portraiture of the feelings, passions, and character of 
these peculiar people. Let the decree below be affirmed." 



270 SOME STRANGE CORNERS OF OUR COUNTRY. 

This settled the matter, and Acoma sent a delegation to 
take the saint to his home. Half-way to Laguna they found 
the painting resting against a tree beside the road, the face 
toward Acoma. To this day the simple people beUeve that 
San Jose knew he was now free, and was in such haste to get 
back to Acoma that he started out by himself ! The dim and 
tattered canvas hangs beside the altar in the great chui'ch at 
Acoma still, and will so long as a shred is left. 

Fray Mariano, who thus averted a destructive war, met a 
tragic end in 1848. He went out one morning to shoot a 
chicken for dinner. His venerable pistol would not- work 
tni he looked into it to see what was the matter. Then it 
went off and blew out his brains. 

These are a few of the Strange Corners of our own coun- 
try. There are very many more, of which others can tell you 
much better than I. This book is meant to call your atten- 
tion chiefly to the southwest, which is the most remarkable 
area in the United States and the most neglected — though 
by no means the only one worth learning about and seeing. 
The whole "West is full of wonders, and we need not run to 
other lands to gratify our longing for the curious and the 
wonderful. The trip abroad may at least be postponed until 
we are ready to tell those we shall meet in foreign lands 
something of the wonders of our own. 



